Gulag, the Story

Season 1

Soviet prison camps were a criminal system of oppression that was widespread and long-lasting. The writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn named it the Gulag Archipelago.

Where to Watch Gulag, the Story • Season 1

3 Episodes

From experimentation to setting up the forced labour system (1918-1936)
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From experimentation to setting up the forced labour system (1918-1936)Setup and creation of a labour system nationwide which turned into a horrific prison.
The Gulag in the turmoil of the “Great Terror” and war (1937-1945)
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The Gulag in the turmoil of the “Great Terror” and war (1937-1945)In 1934, Stalin launched the works of the Volga-Moscow canal and the construction of a new Trans-Siberian railway. The NKVD multiplies the camps and transforms the Gulag into a real prison industry. The number of deportees crosses the million mark in 1935. A spectacular showcase of the great terror unleashed in 1937, the Moscow trials concealed the extent of the repression which was now in full bloom across all levelsl of Soviet society. Mass executions and arbitrary arrests are accelerating. In August 1939, after the signing of the German-Soviet pact, hundreds of thousands of Poles, Baltics, West Ukrainians and Moldavians join some 2 million Soviet deportees in the Gulag camps. . Famine and disease ravage the ranks of the detainees as Hitler invades Russia. In 1945, despite the victory over Nazi Germany, the Gulag archipelago, an essential engine of the Soviet production machine, begin to expand again.
The Gulag’s peak and decline (1945-1953)
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The Gulag’s peak and decline (1945-1953)The populations of the newly occupied eastern territories remain suspected of anti-Sovietism. The third category targeted is that of intellectuals, in particular within an expanding Soviet student population. Women, including many war widows sentenced to heavy penalties for petty pilfering, now represent a quarter of the zeks. Nearly 2 million detainees, many of them at the extreme limit of survival, are still crammed into the camps. Little by little, these appalling living conditions bring down the economic profitability of the Gulag. On March 5, 1953, after the death of Stalin, a million releases are pronounced. In 1956, Khrushchev, exonerating himself from his responsibility, denounces the crimes of Stalinism, causing a huge shock wave in the world. The concentration camp system does not disappear completely, but will never again regain the scale of its past forty years of mass repression.