WORLD HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -What was the Gulag ? The Gulag was a system of Soviet labour camps and accompanying detention and transit camps and prisons. From the 1920s to the mid-1950s it housed political prisoners and criminals of the Soviet Union. At its height, the Gulag imprisoned millions of people.

Detailed explanation-2: -The word Gulag is actually an acronym (used from 1930) for (Glavnoye Upravleniye LAGerey), or Main Camp Administration, which was a special division of the secret police and the Soviet Ministry of the Interior overseeing the use of the physical labour of prisoners.

Detailed explanation-3: -Prisoners competed for access to all of life’s necessities, and violence among the prisoners was commonplace. If they survived hunger, disease, the harsh elements, heavy labor, and their fellow prisoners, they might succumb to arbitrary violence at the hands of camp guards.

Detailed explanation-4: -The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, a large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extrajudicial punishment.