Question by Andrew: When did the Soviets stop sendng prisoners to the Gulag?? V V V?
I have a few Questions for those who know the history of the Gulag:
1) When did the Soviets stop sending prisoners to the Gulag?
2) When did the Gulag shut down?
3) What happened to the remaining Prisoners and the Camp Gaurds/ Camp officers after the Gulag shut down?
4) What kind of labour did the prisoners do in the Gulag Camps?
5) Is it true that Nazi prisoners captured during or after World war 2, were also sent to the Gulag? (Not including the Political prisoners alreadys sent there)
Answers and Views:
Answer by Rusty O’Kerwin
1) After the fall of the USSR
2) There was no single Gulag, it was a system of prison throughout Siberia. Therefore it would be impossible to say when “it” shut down. You mean “they” shut down.
3) Political prisoners were let go and the others were sent to other prisons.
4) All sorts, as long as it was hard.
5) Yes it is true. Of those sent only three percent were ever sent back to Germany. The rest died in prison.
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fallenaway says
After publishing the "Secret Speech" exposing some of Stalin's brutal acts, the Gulag was officially abolished in 1957, and over a period of a few years those political prisoners still alive were released and "pardoned." In fact the labor camp system continued on until the Soviet collapse, but the inmates were criminals, not political dissidents.
While the guards were assigned other duties within the Interior Ministry (border guards, for example) some inmates chose to remain in the cities nearby their camps. The administrative center of the Gulag was in the city of Magadan (on the Pacific coast fronting the Sea of Okust, and many of its present residents were camp inmates. The city mayor is a former KGB camp official.
Not only German prisoners but approximately 600,000 Japanese Army prisoners, captured in the Far East, were sent into labor camps, also a ten year sentence for many, especially the 55,000 Japanese officers. Most died in the camps.
While the Gulag had been officially abolished, under Brezhnev's reign, political prisoners were routinely committed to mental institutes and treated/drugged as mentally ill.
PS While Stalin and Beria wanted the camps to be productive, and pay their own way while contributing to the Soviet economy, the camps were always a money-losing activity.
Spellbound says
1) The Soviets stopped sending prisoners to the Gulag by about 1953 / 54 (although some were still sent as late as 1956)
2) The Gulag began to be closed in 1953 soon after Stalin died under orders from Beria, although the MVD (Ministry of Internal Affairs) retained some camps until they were dissolved on 26th January 1960.
3) The vast majority of prisoners were granted an amnesty in March 1953 – this was for non-political prisoners, and political prisoners sentenced to less than 5 years. The bulk of the political prisoners were released from 1954, with many released after Khrushchev denounced Stalinsim in the 1956 Secrete Speech.
4) The work varied depending on where the camp was and when it was in operation, the most deadly camps were those for the uranium mines. Other work included mining, building dams, canals, and factories (see the work of the artist Rodchenko – Belomor Canal – he photographed the construction of this project in the 1930s). Some prisoners, notably Tupolev the great aircraft designer, and many scientists worked in fairly luxurious camps, they worked on the aircraft design, Soviet atomic bomb project and on the Soviet space programme, these people had access to some of the country's best scientific instruments, libraries and lived in compounds, rather than camps.
5) Yes, many captured Nazis were imprisoned in the Gulag, although, arguably they were the lucky ones. Many German POWs were sent to Kazakhstan or Siberia and held in very rudimentary camps – often having to dig holes in the ground for shelter. The death toll was extremely high.
See: http://www.osaarchivum.org/ http://yalepress.yale.edu/yupbooks/book.asp?isbn=…