The Gulag during WWII?

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1. Cister says

   During World War II, Gulag populations declined sharply, owing to the mass releases of hundreds of thousands of prisoners who were conscripted and sent directly to the front lines (often into penal battalions, who were thrown into the most dangerous battles and experienced high casualty rates) and a steep rise in mortality in 1942–1943. After WWII the number of inmates in prison camps and colonies again rose sharply, reaching approximately 2.5 million people by the early 1950s (about 1.7 millions of whom were in camps). While some of these were deserters and war criminals, there were also 339,000 Soviet citizens repatriated from DP camps in Germany (including 233,000 former military personnel) charged with treason and aiding the enemy.[citation needed] Tens of thousands of these were eventually convicted and transferred to prison camps. Large numbers of civilians from Russian territories which came under foreign occupation and territories annexed by the Soviet Union after the war were also sent there.[citation needed] It was not uncommon for the survivors of Nazi camps to be transported directly to the Soviet labour camps.[citation needed] Yet the major reason for the post-war increase in the number of prisoners was the tightening of legislation on property offences in summer 1947 (at this time there was a famine in some parts of the USSR, claiming about 1 million lives), which resulted in hundreds of thousands of convictions to lengthy prison terms, not seldom on the basis of cases of petty theft or embezzlement.

   For years after WWII, a significant minority of the inmates were Balts and Ukrainians from lands newly incorporated into the USSR, as well as Finns, Poles, Romanians and others. POWs, in contrast, were kept in a separate camp system, which was managed by a separate main administration with the NKVD/MVD.

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