The US intelligence reveals that the prisoners, mostly common criminals, were rewarded for their corrective labour with money and food. Ironically, Solzhenytsin’s novel also mostly admits the same fact in passing.
The History of the USSR & the Peoples’ Democracies
Chapter 5, Section 4 (C5S4)
Saed T.
The CIA-funded media presents the Soviet state as having enslaved individuals, sending them to the corrective labour camps, the Gulags. The prisoners were not enslaved, firstly because they had given up their liberty on their own by committing crimes, and secondly because they were materially rewarded for their work in the form of payments or in kind.
A September 1952 US State Department document stated:
The utilization of food, as an incentive to work, to be diminished or increased with the work or performance of the prisoner, is perhaps a unique feature of the Soviet corrective labor system. This principle receives official sanction in the regulation governing corrective labor camps. The Regulations for the Supply of the Ukhta.Pechora NKDV Corrective-Labor Camp, issued in May 1937, states in section 1, paragraph 2, that «in distributing the food supplies a system must be followed whereby the quantity of products issued to the prisoners rises in proportion to the rate of fulfillment (or overfulfillment) of the norm.» (Forced Labor in the Soviet Union, US State Department, Division of Publications, Office of Public Affairs, Department of State Publication 4716, European and British Commonwealth Series No. 37, September 1952, p. 50) (IMG)
The September 1952 US State Department document, referring to the prisoner workers in the Soviet corrective labour camps, stated:
Practically all workers, even those engaged in labor where piece-rate determination is difficult, such as snow removal, are judged on a piece-rate basis. Specialists and persons such as electricians, engineers, and doctors are considered as fulfilling 100 percent of the norm. (Forced Labor in the Soviet Union, US State Department, Division of Publications, Office of Public Affairs, Department of State Publication 4716, European and British Commonwealth Series No. 37, September 1952, p. 50) (IMG)
Hence, the US State Department document was confirming that by 1952 the piece-rate wage system was the system of rewards given to all the prisoner workers in the Soviet Union; before then, the prisoners were materially rewarded by the amount of food they received.
The above-cited US State Department document was concerning all of the corrective labour camps, the gulag system in general, in the USSR. However, the CIA provided details of specific labour camps. That the prisoners were paid is also confirmed by the CIA’s Office of Research and Report, which is one of the bodies responsible for collecting the different reports by individual CIA operatives, dissecting the corroborated/validated points among them and placing them together into a single report. This fact is important because it means that the remarks by the CIA’s Office of Research and Report are based on not just one source, but several sources. In this document, the CIA’s Office of Research and Report stated:
Beginning in 1950-51, prisoners in some camps began to, receive wages for their work, and by the end of 1953 this practice had been extended to all camps. Prisoners were paid for their work on the basis of wage rates and norms applicable to free workers, except that forced laborers were not paid the special bonuses for work in areas and for length of service. (FORCED LABOR IN THE USSR 1953-57, CIA, Office of Research and Reports, September 12, 1958, p. 14) (IMG)
The report by the Office of Research and Reports continued:
In 1950-51 the system of zachet under which the prisoner was able to reduce his term of imprisonment by overfulfilling his work norm, was introduced in a few camps and was liberalized and extended throughout the camp system during 1953-1954. (FORCED LABOR IN THE USSR 1953-57, CIA, Office of Research and Reports, September 12, 1958, p. 15) (IMG)
Other US intelligence reports pretty consistently corroborate the fact that the Gulag inmates/prisoners were paid for their work. Some of these other US intelligence documents focus on specific camps that were of prime importance. There was one CIA report about the different types of corrective labor camps in the USSR and explains some of the aspects of these camps:
1. The following report mentions several different types of forced labor camps in the USSR, viz.:
a. Minlag: A camp maintained by the MGB for political prisoners. Minlag is an abbreviation of ministralnaya lagernaya chast MGB. The meaning of ministralnaya is said to be that the camps is central one with certain responsibilities for dependent camps.
b. Gorlag: A camp maintained by the MGB for political prisoners, at which special precautions against escape are taken. Gorlag is an abbreviation of gosudarstvennyy osoborezhimnyy lager (State special regime camp).
c. OLI’: A small camp in a severe climate, maintained by the MGB and believed to be a subdivision of a minlag. OLP is an abbreviation of otdeleniye lagernogo puncta chrezvychaynorezhimnogo lagerya (subsection of a sub-camp of an extreme regime camp).
d. Ozerlag: A camp maintained by the MVD for both political and criminal prisoners with long sentences, at which special restrictive measures apply. Ozerlag is an abbreviation for osobozakrytnyy rezhimnyy lager (special closed regime camp).
e. Steplag: An MVD camp in the steppe zone, believed to be identical in function with an Ozerlag.
f. ITL: A corrective labor camp maintained by the MVD. The initials stand for ispravitelnyy trudovoy lager (corrective labor camp).
g. KTR: A penal labor camp maintained by the Ministry of Justice. The “K” stands for katorzynyy (penal), the “T” probably stands for trudovoy (labor), and the “R” may stand for rezhim (regime).
h. Peresylka: A transit camp (peresylnyy lager)
(FORCED LABOR CAMPS, CIA, December 1, 1954, p. 1. Bold added. Underline original.) (IMG)
Note that the list of the terms above is not referring to individual camp settlements but rather the different types and series of camps throughout the USSR. For, example, the Ozerlag was a chain of camps that stretches from near Moscow all the way to near Vladivostok. Hence, the list above is referring to the chains of camps throughout the USSR, and the different types of camps thereof. While aspects of all the series of Gulag camps will be examined in this section, three in particular will be given special attention because they are the most important ones: Ozerlag, Vyatlag, and Angarlag. They are important because all of them were among the largest and most extensive of the corrective labour camps in the USSR, and hence provide excellent cases to examine. Describing the history of the Gulag camps in Siberia, Igor Naumov, who was anti-communist collaborator of the Soros agent Jonathan Brent (see the ‘Titoist Coup’ images section for C19S3.1), listed Ozerlag as being one of the top five:
largest and most horrendous GULAG structures…. (The History of Siberia, Igor Naumov, 2006, p. 202) (IMG)
On the other hand, according to ‘Open Democracy’ – an Atlanticist publication that as early as 2012, received funding from Soros’s Open Society Foundation as well as the CIA’s Ford Foundation – the Vyatlag was one of the biggest concentration camps in the Gulag system:
In 1938 a special order from the USSR People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs established Vyatlag, one of the biggest concentrations of forced labour camps in the Gulag system, in the north of the Kirov Oblast, 1000 km north east of Moscow. Its 75th anniversary falls in 2013. During the period 1938-56 more than 100,000 prisoners from 20 countries and of 80 different nationalities were sent here to serve their sentence. 18,000 of them were destined never to see their homes again. (Vyatlag: the Gulag then and now, Open Democracy, Ekaterina Lushnikova, November 9, 2012) (IMG)
One CIA document was particularly concerned with Vyatlag and more important the Ozerlag labour camp because it was the one that was maintained by the Soviet intelligence service for political criminals and ordinary criminals. A CIA document explored the organization of labor camps:
This six-page report provides detailed information on the organization of labor camps…. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. Main) (IMG)
In this CIA document:
The bulk of this information concerns [the] Ozerlag…. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. Main) (IMG)
The Ozerlag was not just one camp settlement but was a large chain of camps stretching across Soviet territory, and was:
maintained by the MVD for both political and criminal prisoners with long sentences…. (FORCED LABOR CAMPS, CIA, December 1, 1954, p. 1) (IMG)
Note again that ‘the camp’ referred to a long series of camp settlements across the USSR. The CIA provided the data on the per settlement number of prisoners in Ozerlag and other camp types:
The number of prisoners in each labor camp settlement was different, and in Ozerlag ranged from 600 to 2,000. The size of settlements in other labor camps was different; for example, in Vyatlag in 1946-47 there were 1,500 to 3,500 prisoners per settlement, and in Minlag in 1948-49 there were 5,000 to 8,000 prisoners per settlement. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 2) (IMG)
Another confusion that may arise out of reading the 1957 CIA document is that since the title of a subsection of it is ‘Ozerlag, 1951-1955’, all the points made in it are solely regarding the period 1951-1955. Although the subsection focuses predominantly on the 1950s, it would be a misconception to assume that the remarks made under it are solely with regards to the 1950s, since the above-cited paragraph, which explains the camps well prior to 1949, is also under that subsection.
Anyways, until 1952, the prisoners were rewarded with food, as opposed to money, according to the CIA. More work, more food. The CIA document reported:
Until 1952 the “guaranteed ration” was distributed to each prisoner, regardless of whether or not he had fulfilled the norm. It consisted of 122 grams of groats, 10 grams of flour, 20 grams of sugar, 75 grams of fish, 10 grams of something made of flour, such as macaroni, 500 grams of potatoes and vegetables, 15 grams of fate, 17 grams of coffee substitute, 1.3 grams of tomato sauce, 45 grams of meat, and 650 grams of bread. From this the following meals were delivered: breakfast – 700 grams of soup and 200 cc of kasha; dinner – 700 cc of soup and 200 grams of bread; supper 700 cc of soup and 200 cc of kasha. In the evening a portion of fish and 200 grams of bread were handed out. All these food products were of extremely low quality. In addition, it was permitted to substitute some products for others; for example, fish could be substituted for meat, cabbage for potatoes, etc. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 4) (IMG)
An individual who worked more received more food:
The prisoners who fulfilled over 100% of the norm were given a supplementary ration. There were several grades, each including 100 grams of bread, 200 cc of kasha, and 5 grams of sugar more than the next lowest one. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 4) (IMG)
From March 1952 onwards however, the prisoners were paid/rewarded with money for their work:
Beginning with March 1952 the camp was put on a basis of economic accountability (khozrashet), i.e. the prisoners were paid for their work on the basis of a reduced rate of output (po vyrabotke po ponizhennoy tarifnoy setke). The quantity of food was increased: everyone was given daily an additional 800 grams of bread, 130 grams of groats, 10 grams of flour products, 30 grams of fat, 27 grams of sugar, 3 grams of tomato puree, 350 grams of potatoes, 500 grams of vegetables, 45 grams of meat, and up to 90 grams of fish. The food improved, but the practice of substituting some products for others remained. Moreover, there always was an inadequate amount of green vegetables and the prisoners all suffered from scurvy. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 4) (IMG)
The prisoners could utilize their money for purchasing the goods at the store:
Stores (lar’ki) where food and tobacco could be bought were opened at the settlements. One could always buy bread at these stores, but the supply of other products was poor. There were expensive products, too expensive for the prisoners to buy, but rarely cheap products. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 4) (IMG)
There was a wage differentiation:
The amount of earnings depended on the profession and on the degree of fulfillment of the norms, if there were norms for that particular type of work. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 5) (IMG)
The CIA provided further details by stating:
Each enterprise where the prisoners worked paid the money earned by the prisoners to the camp. The camp deducted 60% of each prisoner’s earnings for the upkeep of the camp. More was deducted from the remaining 40% as the upkeep of he prisoner himself, i.e. for lodging, food, clothing, and services such as light, heating, bath, barber, etc. The remaining money was given to the prisoner. For example: a locksmith … in a motor vehicle repair shop earned 1,000 rubles a month. The camp reduced 600 rubles for the upkeep of the camp. About 100 rubles of the remaining 400 rubles was deducted for food, 75 rubles for clothing, about 50 rubles for everything else, such as lodging, bath, barber, etc. He was given the remaining money. This was typical of worker who was a specialist. The other workers received an average of 30-40 rubles a month. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 5) (IMG)
In addition:
Those who were employed in economic services, such as shoemakers, barbers, etc., and also prisoners who worked in the administration, were given a salary of 35 to 100 rubles a month. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 5) (IMG)
For the physically disabled people (‘invalids’), there was a lower deduction from the earnings:
Invalids [i.e. the physically-disabled people] who did production work were paid according to their output. However, only 50% was deducted from their earnings. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 5) (IMG)
In other words, the physically disabled had the equivalent of a tax break.
The per day working hours for the inmates was 10 hours, i.e. 2 hours more than the Soviet workers’ working hours. The CIA stated:
The production norms were in accordance with the All-Union scale and were the same as for free workers. The free workers’ norms were calculated for eight working hours. The daily norms for the prisoners, who worked ten hours, were raised proportionately. In 1954 an eight hour working day was introduced for the prisoners also. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 2) (IMG)
The prisoners were rewarded for their ‘over-fulfilment’ of the production targets. However, too often, the ‘over-fulfilment’ was not real:
Ordinarily the norms were overfulfilled, but mainly on paper. Each brigade leader would record for his brigade more output than had actually been produced. All, from the authorities to the prisoners, were anxious to overfulfill the plan, and consequent authorities paid little heed to the accuracy of output records. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 2) (IMG)
That is, many prisoners got paid for work that they did not do. The brigade leaders in the camps carried an act of sabotage by reporting the production as higher than it was, and the authorities apparently neglected such economic sabotage. Perhaps a reason for such economic sabotage is that the staff of the units of the labour camps were themselves made up of inmates:
The staff of all the units of a labor camp settlement, with the exception of their heads is chosen from the prisoners. An exception is the planning-production unit, the head of which is often [though not always] a prisoner, since apparently there were not enough civilian economists. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 2) (IMG)
Now to be sure, having the units of a labour camp staffed by inmates benefited the camp by bridging the inmates with the heads of the units, and helped employ the skills of the inmates for productive purposes. However, the obvious downside was the economic sabotage mentioned above. Overall, however, the policy of employing staff from among the inmates certainly was useful in boosting production.
The over-fulfillment of the norms also reduced the sentence of the prisoners:
In addition, for overfulfillment of the norm there were the so-called “zachety” (payments). For overfulfilling the norm by 105%, one day of the sentence was counted as two. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 5) (IMG)
On other hand:
Those, such as cooks, trailors, etc., who performed work for which there were no norms, were given the type of compensation in accordance with the evaluation of their work: if the evaluation was good, one day of their sentence counted for two; if the evaluation was excellent, one day counted for 2 or 3, depending on their duties. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 5) (IMG)
The CIA also plausibly claimed that some of the guards abused the laws and murdered prisoners. Such an abuse was put an end to during Stalin’s time period:
Until 1952 if a guard prevented a prisoner’s escape, he received a month’s leave and 300 rubles. As a result it frequently happened that a guard would kill a prisoner for taking one step beyond the boundary of the zapretnaya zone, at work, for example, and then receive 300 rubles and leave. In 1952 this policy of giving leave and money was abolished, and immediately “escape attempts” ceased. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 3) (IMG)
An indication as to whether the inmates had the mentality of actual criminals or not lies in the fact that, upon the rise to power of the Titoist bloc in the Kremlin, numerous criminals were released from jail, and upon release, the majority of these criminals swiftly committed new crimes. Indeed, the US intelligence reported:
The 1953 amnesty was for ordinary criminals. Approximately one-half per cent of the prisoners in Ozerlag were released. Up to 70% of the prisoners in Angarlag were released. They were released in one grand sweep, in approximately one week. Within the next three months the majority of them were rearrested for crimes which they had newly committed and returned to Angarlag. (‘1. FORCED LABOR CAMPS IN THE USSR 2. TRANSFER OF PRISONERS BETWEEN CAMPS 3. DECREES ON RELEASE FROM FORCED LABOR 4. ATTITUDE OF SOVIET PRISON OFFICIALS TOWARD SUSPECTS 1945 TO THE END OF 1955’, CIA, February 11, 1957, p. 2) (IMG)
The Angarlag was a very extensive corrective labour camp. According to the Taishet History website, the vastness of the Angarlag camp columns was follows:
Due to production needs, the camp columns of Angarlag were located on the territory along the railway from Taishet to Ust-Kut and even further. (Angarsk Forced Labor Camp, Taishet History) (IMG)
Another US intelligence document deals more specifically with how the prisoners of war captured during the Great Patriotic War were treated. A prisoner of war captured during the Soviet war against the Nazis eventually got released from the Gulag and was able to provide valuable information to the US intelligence regarding the camp conditions. The prisoner testified::
In July 1944, I was captured a second time by the Soviet Army and sent to the prisoner of war camp in Marshansk. (…). The Marshansk camp was a large camp with a capacity for from between 20,00 and 25,000 prisoners. (…). At Marshansk, treatment of the prisoners was generally fair and we were able to walk around inside the camp after returning from working parties. At 5:30 each morning, the roll call was handled by a major and two surgeons who counted prisoners in each barracks and asked each prisoner if he was sick or all right. (…). The treatment of the prisoners inside the camp was not particularly brutal because there were so many prisoners that the Soviets were not able to get mad at any one in particular. On those days that I stayed in the camp, having been excused from work details because of illness, I and other prisoners in the same position had routine duties such as policing the camp and digging what we called “brown coal” from the ground for heating the barracks.
(‘POW CAMPS: GENERAL CONDITIONS / SECURITY MEASURES/ TREATMENT OF PRISONERS / POLITICAL INDOCTRINATION / INTERROGATION / MEDICAL TREATMENT / WORK ASSIGNMENTS’, CIA, January 12, 1954, p. 5) (IMG)
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the anti-Soviet fiction writer whose idol was General Franco, claimed that the notorious Nazi-collaborationist Vlasov Army, not the Red Army, was the military force liberating Prague from Nazi German occupation. West Germany’s Die Welt reported:
Solzhenitsyn writes in «The Gulag Archipelago» that the credit for having driven the Germans from the city belongs to the Vlasov units, i.e. units composed of Russian prisoners of war who were placed under the command of the German Wehrmacht. (‘VLASOV SIDED WITH THE CZECHS: Who Took Part in the Prague Rebellion of May 1945?’, Die Welt, February 26, 1974, p. 1. In: CIA archives) (IMG)
In the fiction novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich,” Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the infamous fanboy of General Franco and the Vlasov Army, naturally spread slanders against the USSR’s corrective labour camps system. Yet, even this Vlasovite apologist, so beloved by the CIA, could not hide the fact that in the corrective labour camps, more work brought more material rewards in the form of more food. In the novel ‘One Day’, the ‘protagonist’ is Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, the corrective labour inmate ‘oppressed’ by the ‘Stalinist’ ‘regime’, whereas Tyurin is a ‘foreman’ in the camp. Importantly, the camp prisoners received “rates for the job” upon which “their ration … depended….” and they could receive “good rates for their work.” In the novel, it is stated that “better rates” “meant … good bread rations….” The following are excerpts of the novel:
now he must have been figuring out how to get them good rates for the job. And their ration for the next five days depended on this. ( One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, p. 47)
Shukhov heard Tyurin say in Pavlo’s ear : “You stay here and keep ’em at it. I’ve got to go and fix the work rates.”
More depends on the work rates than on the work itself. A clever boss who knows his business really sweets over these work rates. That’s where the ration comes from. If a job hadn’t been done, make it look like it had. If the rates were low on a job, try to hike ’em up. You had to have brains for this and a lot of pull with the fellows who kept the work sheets. And they didn’t do it for nothing.
(One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, p. 63)
Tyurin got “better rates,” which meant they’d have good bread rations…. (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, p. 89)
Shukhov went to sleep, and he was very happy. He’d had a lot of luck today. They hadn’t put him in the cooler. The gang hadn’t been chased out to work in the Socialist Community Development. He’d finagled an extra bowl of much at noon. The boss had gotten them good rates for their work. (One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, p. 187)
Obviously, the novel was a fiction work and cannot be cited as concrete historical evidence. However, it is remarkable that Solzhenitsyn novels are cited as ‘realistic’ fiction depicting the Soviet corrective labour camps, and yet even in such an anti-Soviet fiction novel, this fact about the Soviet system is mentioned. It is the consensus of the mainstream anti-Soviet media that Ivan Denisovich Shukhov was one fiction character representing the actual lives of real people who lived in the corrective labour camps. And yet, here came Solzhenitsyn basically admitting in his novel that the camp inmates were receiving rates. The picture that emerges form the US State Department and CIA documents and from the Solzhenitsyn fiction, which is a kind of a fiction considered by anti-Soviet media as reflective of historical truth, is that the corrective labour camps were not slavery but practically a form of mandatory capitalistic-spirited exploitation inflicted upon criminals in the USSR. The prisoners of the corrective labour camps were punished and made to suffer not from slavery but from a kind of a workplace that inherited the capitalistic spirit – the key difference being that the workplace was owned by a workers’ state, rather than privately owned.
Another important issue regarding the Gulags is with regards to the size of its population. Firstly, it is important to note that the CIA too agrees that the huge figures given for the population of prisoners in the Gulags are unrealistic and implausible:
the number of prisoners in the prewar period (about 1941) at 10 million, plus or minus 20 percent, and at 12 million, plus or minus 10 percent, in the postwar period (about 1950). These magnitudes were obtained for each period by assembling all available reports from ex-prisoners who had given the number of prisoners at various forced labor sites, computing an estimate of the average number of prisoners per place and multiplying this average by the estimated total number of places associated with forced labor camps. Because of the nature of the data (observation reports from ex-prisoners) and the methodology used, and in light of information received since 1953, the estimate of 12 million prisoners as of about 1950 appears much too high. As at least 4 out of every 5 prisoners were males in the productive ace group (15 to 59) , moreover, a prisoner population of such a magnitude would mean that nearly one-fifth of all adult males were imprisoned. So disastrous would be the demographic and economic consequences of such a situation that its existence seems highly implausible. (FORCED LABOR IN THE USSR 1953-57, CIA, Office of Research and Reports, September 12, 1958, p. 20) (IMG)
A document published by the America’s ‘National Park Service’ – a US government agency that not only deals with matters concerning ecology and the parks, but also with museums, historical sites, military history, and preservation of historic materials – fiercely denounced the USSR. It did, however, acknowledge that the maximum number of inmates that the USSR’s corrective labour camps had was around 2.5 million:
The camp population grew from 179,000 in 1929 to 2,468,524 in 1953 (reaching its height in 1950 with 2,525,146 inmates). (GULAG FACT SHEET, National Park Service, United States Government, 2017, p. 1) (IMG)
Regarding the death toll in the Gulag, the document admitted that the bulk of the deaths in the Gulags were during the war years, when food, medicine, and other facilities grew scarce for the entire Soviet population, not just the prisoners:
perhaps 1.5 million perished. It is important to remember, however, that in most years more people were amnestied from the Gulag than died in it. Excepting the brutal war years, the most common experience of the Gulag was surviving it. (GULAG FACT SHEET, National Park Service, United States Government, 2017, p. 1) (IMG)
Another CIA document further reported:
Mortality was fairly high at all camps until 1948, in which year conditions became more humane at most camps. From May Day 1952, each prisoner was paid a daily wage though deductions were made for food and clothing, with the result that the only prisoners who ever held any cash in their hands were the few who were able occasionally to exceed their norm. Even these, at that time, were not allowed to have more than 100 rubles in the pockets…. (FORCED LABOR CAMPS, CIA, December 1, 1954, p. 6) (IMG)
Obviously, the high mortality rate was owing to the severe damage caused by the Axis invasion, as a result of which the mortality rates were high whether inside or outside the camps. After 1948 when some success was seen in the reconstruction efforts, the conditions became better. More importantly though, the CIA document has admitted that the Gulag prisoners were paid for their work starting from mid-1952, which was during the Stalin era, and that the prisoners were paid more for more work. The CIA document also confirmed:
In all camps, women had exactly the same conditions as men. (FORCED LABOR CAMPS, CIA, December 1, 1954, p. 6) (IMG)
The persecution of juveniles in the Soviet Union was banned. As confirmed by the British Foreign Office, the USSR had:
the Law of April 1935, forbidding the prosecution of small children on political charges…. (N 1294/233/38, No. 85, Sir W. Seeds to Viscount Halifax, Msocow, March 7, 1939; received March 10, 1939, Foreign Office (1939), p. 67) (IMG{{Factional Conflict & Great Purge})
There was at least one case in which children were tried as ‘fascist’ ‘agents’ by a Yezhovite intelligence official. However, as mentioned in C9S1, that Yezhovite official was purged for his abuse of children.
Click here for Screenshots of Source Documents
Fuentes:
https://sovinform.net/Corrective-Labour-Camps.htm