The system of repression in
the Soviet regime
The system of repression in the Soviet regime
Acknowledgements
This source collection
is made by Chris Rowe
and Ghislaine
Kokshoorn. This
collection is part of the
unit “Internment
without a trial:
Examples from the
Nazi and Soviet
regimes” that is
developed in the MultiFacetted Memory
project.
More information
www.euroclio.eu/multifacetted-memory
The Soviet regime emerged from violent revolution and civil war. Its leaders,
above all Stalin, were obsessed with protecting the new state against its real
and imagined enemies, especially the enemy within’ – the internal ‘enemies
of the state’ who might support counter-revolution. A vast system of
bureaucratic terror was constructed: propaganda, the secret police,
thousands of informers and detention without trial and the exploitation of
forced labour. Imitating and expanding upon the methods used by the
former Tsarist regime, a network of prison camps was established across
Siberia. This system became even harsher during the ‘High Stalinism’ of the
1930s. During the Great Fatherland War conditions were eased slightly; but
full-scale repression was re-established after 1945. It was only after Stalin’s
death in 1953 that the ‘Gulag’ was dismantled, though Soviet repression
continued in other, subtler ways.
In the 19th century, the intellectual ideas of Marxism were set out by two
German revolutionary thinkers: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels.
Marxist ideals inspired many revolutionary movements, especially after the First World
War; but most revolutions, such as those in Germany and Hungary, were suppressed. It
was in Russia that Marxist ideas were put into practice by the leaders of the Bolshevik
Revolution and the emerging Soviet Union, Lenin and Stalin. Lenin and Stalin believed
that a communist revolution could only succeed if it destroyed its class enemies by
ruthless repression and the use of Terror. (CC-BY-SA 3.0 CarlosXVIG )
Enemies of the people
"Comrade Lenin Cleanses the Earth of Filth"
by Viktor Deni. November 1920.
The picture of Lenin ‘ cleansing the earth of
filth’ (royals, capitalists and priests) shows
who the opponents were. (public domain)
Stalin birthday in 1929. Left to right: Mikhail Kalinin, Lazar Kaganovich, Sergo
Ordzhonikidze, Stalin, Voroshilov, Molotov (obscured), Sergei Kirov.
Joseph Stalin consolidated near-absolute power by 1929 and strengthened his grip on the state by
the Great Terror of the 1930s. There was a purge of the Communist Party to expel "opportunists"
and "counter-revolutionary infiltrators“; a purge of the Red Army.; and mass arrests of ordinary
people. Many were executed. Many were imprisoned in the massive network of labour camps
known as the Gulag. The Gulag was a system of forced labor camps, mostly in Siberia. The Gulag
was at its height under Stalin and was dismantled after 1953 (although some camps continued to
operate into the 1980s). While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to
political prisoners, large numbers were imprisoned after being denounced by informers, with no
presence of any trial. (Public Domain)
Away with private peasants!
The "liquidation of the kulaks as a class" was announced by Joseph Stalin on 27
December 1929. The stated purpose of the campaign was to fight the counterrevolution and build socialism in the countryside. ‘Rich’ peasants were denounced as
class enemies and a danger to the state. ‘Dekulakization’ involved mass deportations
and executions. More than 1.8 million peasants were deported in 1930–1931. (Public
Domain)
Construction of the Belomor Canal
One of the first massive forced labour projects was the construction of the Belomor
Canal, connecting the White Sea to the Baltic. At least 250 000 prisoners were forced to
work on the Belamor Canal, in terrible conditions. OGPU (secret police) chiefs
responsible for construction of the White Sea - Baltic Canal, 1932 Right: Naftaly Frenkel,
Center: Matvei Berman (head of the Gulag from 1932-1939), Left: Afanasev (Head of the
southern part of BelBaltLag)
Building collective housing in deportee villages, 1930
There are not many construction drawings. Mainly because there was not much
construction needed seeing the environment kept people from escaping. There were
also not many guards needed because prisoners couldn’t escape. (UVD archives,
Arkhangelsk region)
Building the Makarikha transit camp, Kotlas district, February 1930
(UVD archives, Arkhangelsk region)
Genrikh Yagoda (middle) inspecting
the construction of the Moscow-Volga
canal.
The OGPU-Directors Genrikh Yagoda and
N. Filatov on the building-site of the
Moskva-Volga-canal. Nikita Khrushchev is
left behind Yagoda. 3 September 1935
A watchtower of the "Project 503 "
The watchtower overlooked the entire
territory of the camp (which was not
overgrown with trees as it is now). Above
all, it had a view of the so-called forbidden
zone between individual towers. There
were three fences here – besides the main
high fence of barbed wire, there was also
a lower fence (made of wire or a wooden
enclosure) at a distance of 5.5 meters
from the main fence as well as an outer
fence of the same type at a distance of 15
meters from the main enclosure. Anyone
who set foot in the forbidden zone
between these fences could be shot by the
guards for attempting to escape.
Perimeter fence and watchtower, Vorkuta Gulag
ITK-6 Camp (Perm-36)
ITK-6 Camp (Perm-36) in 1946. The camp had four barracks for 250 prisoners each, a
punishment block (for prisoners who disobeyed the harsh camp rules), a hospital,
outhouses, and a headquarters building. Drawing by Oleg Petrov.
Prison Plan of Perm-36
Plan of Perm-36 made by Lett Gunar Astra (in Latvian).
The Omchag camp
Photographed on its last day as a camp. Only at the end, the camps were better
constructed.
Solovki Island, 1924/25
Prisoners digging clay for the brickyard.
White Sea–Baltic Canal
The White Sea–Baltic Canal was the first major project constructed in the Soviet Union
using forced labor. Convicts at work 1931-1933. (Public Domain Russia)
White Sea–Baltic Canal
The White Sea–Baltic Canal was the first major project constructed in the Soviet Union
using forced labor. Convicts at work 1931-1933. (Public Domain Russia)
The Kolyma Highway (road of bones)
The Kolyma Highway was constructed during the Stalinist era of the USSR by the
Dalstroy construction directorate. The first stretch was built by the inmates of the
Sevvostlag labour camp in 1932, and construction continued with the use of gulag
labour until 1953. (Public Domain Russia)
The Kolyma Highway (road of bones)
The road is treated as a memorial, as the bones of the people who died while
constructing it were laid beneath or around the road. As the road is built on
permafrost, interment into the fabric of the road was deemed more practical than
digging new holes to bury the bodies of the dead. (Public Domain)
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1929 - 1930
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1931 - 1932
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1933 - 1934
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1935 - 1936
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1937 - 1938
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1939 - 1940
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1941 - 1942
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1943 - 1944
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1945 - 1946
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1947 - 1948
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1949 - 1950
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1951 - 1952
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1953 - 1954
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1955 - 1956
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1957 - 1958
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
The distribution of camps (lagerya) in USSR
1959 - 1960
Mapping the Gulag Research Project, Economic and Social Research Council, United Kingdom.
Gulag prisoner population
statistics from 1934 to 1953.
Figures from: J. Arch Getty, Gabor T. Rittersporn, and Viktor N. Zemdkob, Victims
of the Soviet Penal System in the Pre-war Years: A First Approach on the Basis of
Archival Evidence
About 14 million
people were in the
Gulag labor camps
from 1929 to 1953
(the estimates for the
period 1918-1929 are
even more difficult to
be calculated). A
further 6–7 million
were deported and
exiled to remote
areas of the USSR,
and 4–5 million
passed through labor
colonies, plus 3.5
million already in, or
sent to, 'labor
settlements'.
According with some
estimates, the total
population of the
camps varied from
510,307 in 1934 to
1,727,970 in 1953.
Beria's order to kill all Polish armor
officers.
The accepted proposal of Lavrentiy Beria
to execute former Polish army and police
officers in NKVD prisoner of war camps
and prisons. March 1940. This is the first
page of Beria's notice (oversigned by
Stalin), to kill approximately 15,000 Polish
officers and some 10,000 more
intellectuals in the Katyn Forest and other
places in the Soviet Union.
Latvians in railcars in the process
of deportation in 1941.
June deportation was the first in the
series of mass Soviet deportations of
tens of thousands of people from the
Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine and
Moldova starting June 14, 1941 that
followed the occupation and
annexation of the Baltic states. The
procedure for deporting the "antiSoviet elements" was approved by
Ivan Serov in the so-called Serov
Instructions. Men were generally
imprisoned and most of them died in
Siberian prison camps (Gulag);
women and children were resettled
in Kirov, Tomsk, Omsk and
Novosibirsk Oblast as well as
Krasnoyarsk and Altai Krai. About a
half of them eventually survived.
(Public Domain Russia)
Soviet POW’s in German hands
During World War II, Nazi Germany engaged in deliberately genocidal policies towards
Soviet Union prisoners of war (POWs). This resulted in some 3.3 to 3.5 million deaths,
about 60% of all Soviet POWs. During Operation Barbarossa, the Axis invasion of the
Soviet Union, and the subsequent German–Soviet War, millions of Red Army prisoners
of war were taken. Some of them were arbitrarily executed in the field by the German
forces, died under inhumane conditions in German prisoner-of-war camps and during
ruthless death marches from the front lines, or were shipped to Nazi concentration
camps for extermination. This images shows Soviet prisoners of war in Mauthausen
concentration camp. The date is unknown. (German Federal Archive, Sammlung KZ
Mauthausen, Bild 192-208)
Estonian children deported to Siberia in Operation Priboi
After the war, further deportations, known as Operation Priboi, were staged in a much
larger scale. Operation Priboi ("Coastal Surf") was the code name for the Soviet mass
deportation from the Baltic states on March 25–28, 1949, called March deportation by
Baltic historians. Some 90,000 Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians, labeled as enemies
of the people, were deported to inhospitable areas of the Soviet Union. It was one of
the most complex deportation operations engineered by the Soviets in the Cold war
era. 72% of deportees were women and children under 16. (No known copyright
restrictions)
Female prisoners of the Gulag
Accounts of life in the labor camps across the Soviet Union encompass rape and
prostitution, dead babies and brutal interrogations. But besides the many horrors,
there are also surprising and inspiring tales of love and friendship, resilience and
resourcefulness. These extremes are shown in vivid and unforgettable detail in books
written by women who survived the labor camps. (No known copyright restrictions)
‘’ Doctors’ plot. ‘’
January 20, 1953. Soviet ukaz awarding
Lydia Timashuk the Order of Lenin for
"unmasking doctors-killers." It was
revoked after Stalin's death later that year.
The death of Stalin, 1953
After Stalin died a process of de-stalinization started in the Soviet Union. The reforms
consisted of changing or removing key institutions that helped Stalin hold power: the
cult of personality that surrounded him, the Stalinist political system and the Gulag
labour-camp system, all of which had been created and dominated by him as General
Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union dueinf
1922–52. Stalin was succeeded by a collective leadership after his death in March 1953,
consisting of: Georgi Malenkov, Premier of the Soviet Union; Lavrentiy Beria, head of
the Ministry of the Interior; and Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Central
Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU).
Execution of Lavrentiy Beria, 1953
On 26 June 1953, Beria was arrested and
held in an undisclosed location near
Moscow. Beria were tried by a special
session of the Supreme Court of the Soviet
Union on 23 December 1953 with no
defense counsel and no right of appeal.
Beria was found guilty of treason,
terrorism and counter-revolutionary
activity. Beria was sentenced to death. He
was executed by firing squad on 23
December 1953, the same day as the trial.
Khrushchev’s 1956 speech
A report by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev made to
the 20th Party Congress of the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union on 25 February 1956. Khrushchev's
speech was sharply critical of the reign of deceased
General Secretary and Premier Joseph Stalin,
particularly with respect to the purges of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union which had
particularly marked the last years of the 1930s.
Khrushchev charged Stalin with having fostered a
leadership personality cult despite ostensibly
maintaining support for the ideals of communism.
The speech was a milestone in the "Khrushchev Thaw."
Superficially, the speech was an attempt to draw the
Soviet Communist Party closer to Leninism.
Khrushchev's ulterior motivation, however, was to
legitimize and help consolidate his control of the
Communist party and government, power obtained in
a political struggle with Stalin loyalists Vyacheslav
Molotov and Georgy Malenkov.
The Khrushchev report was known as the "Secret
Speech" because it was delivered at an unpublicized
closed session of Communist Party delegates, with
guests and members of the press excluded. The text of
the Khrushchev report was widely discussed in party
cells already in early March, often with participation of
non-party members, however the official Russian text
was openly published only in 1989 during the glasnost
campaign of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.
Woman of the Gulag; a survivor tells her story
A documentary featering interviews with some of the last woman to live through the soviet labor
camps. "Women of the Gulag: The Last Survivors" - by Marianna Yarovskaya.
This collection is part of the unit
“Internment without a trial:
Examples from the Nazi and Soviet
regimes”
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