• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Russian Best

Russian Life & People Digest

  • Home
  • Articles
  • Questions and Answers
    • History and Politics
    • Culture and Science
    • People and Language
    • Lifestyle and Attributes
    • Russian Sports
    • Food and Drinks
    • Traveling Russia
    • Economy and Geography
    • Russian Military
    • Books & Movies
Browse: Home / History and Politics

What factors determined whether a person was sent into Soviet gulag?

Question by Darrell: Soviet gulag: what factors determined whether a person was sent there or into exile?
…or to an execution! I know much of the time such decisions were made seemingly at random by Cheka/NKVD officers, or even by Lenin or Stalin or their immediate subordinates, but I can’t find any set “rules” about the how the Bolshevik powers chose to perceive in whether people should get exile, slave labor in a gulag or death. Thank you…
Bu$ – OF COURSE they themselves didn’t have the choice! I’m talking about the sentencing of political prisoners by others, and was quite clear about that in the question.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Bu$ – Spurs best team north London
people never had a choice to go exile. they sneaked there. Anti Communists, spy’s and foriegnerforeigners supsected

Answer by Spellbound
It was to do with whether or not they were “politically dangerous”.
Members of the Left Opposition and supporters, the Right Deviation and supporters, signers of the Ryutin Platform and their supporters or those who were named by others or suspected as supporters of the oppositions were nearly all executed.
Other factors included their compliance in the charade of their arrest and trial. If they played their assigned roles, recant, admit their “crimes”, name others and admit the “correctness” of the General Line (the directives and policies of the Party), then they, if they were not one of the leaders of the opposition, may only be sent to the Gulag. Their political position, the point of the Great Purge was to eliminate the intransigent party leadership in the cities, provinces and republics, so a high ranking party official in a city soviet was more likely to be shot than their underlings.
You have to remember that the Great Purge, whilst it was murderous, was not nearly as deadly as was previously thought – “only” some “680,000 were shot and at its greatest extent only about 1.2 million were imprisoned in the Gulag.

People were imprisoned there for many reasons:
Criminals were sent to labour camps as well as to prisons.
Many Kulaks were sent to the Gulag – these were the richer peasants, although, in reality, they were often just the best farmers in the village.
Political opponents were sent to the Gulag. Initially these were the leadership of the rival political parties, the Kadets, the Mensheviks, the Socialist Revolutionaries. Then this was expanded to include Bolshevik opportunists: followers of Trotsky, or of the “Right Deviation”.
The Gulag also took in those who took part in rebellions and uprisings as well as those in the party who discussed (in negative terms) policies that had already been decided upon – they were accused of factionalism and of trying to undermine “democratic centralism”.
Then the Gulag expanded and people were imprisoned for almost no reason: a careless word could lead to the Gulag. Teachers feared their pupils, parents feared their children, lovers feared their rivals – as a word to the NKVD about how they had insulted the USSR, expressed “bourgeois nationalist sentiment” or similar could also lead to the Gulag.

See:
On the Origin of the Great Purge by J Arch Getty

BTW – it should be referred to as the Gulag, as it means the political prison system, not the individual camps.

Read all the answers in the comments.

Know better? Leave your own answer!

See other posts in History and Politics

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Primary Sidebar

Popular Posts

Pushkin's Tatiana writing a letter to Onegin

Onegin’s Tatiana Was Only Thirteen?

Russian shashlik

My Favorite Russian Food

Dacha – Home Away From Home

Subway Dog

Subway Dogs of Moscow

Cape Cod on the Rocks

What is a cocktail with vodka and cranberry juice called?

Categories

Recent Comments

  • Pat on What does Nazdrovia actually mean?
  • Ted on Where can i send free SMS messages to Russian mobiles?
  • PutinPow on What does Nazdrovia actually mean?
  • bigdogg on What does Nazdrovia actually mean?
  • HAMISH A McDONALD on What Russia would be like today if Nicholas II had not been executed?

Copyright RussianBest.com © 2025 · About · Privacy Policy · Disclaimer: RussianBest.com is an informational website, and its content does not constitute professional advice of any kind.