At the very heart of Socialism is the promise of equality.  But those who live under the heavy thumb of a Socialist regime soon realize that it creates two very unequal groups: the privileged few with access to food, housing and medical care and the rest of the population who live at the mercy of those in charge.  Once the rest figures out that the promises made will go unfulfilled, they revolt in an attempt to get back what was confiscated: their property, their money, their freedom.  By that time, it’s too late and  they’re sent away to a place where they can’t cause trouble, where they can’t tell the truth.  In the former Soviet Union, this place was called the Gulag.

Stalin’s Gulag

The Gulag is a term used to describe the forced labor camps that made up the Soviet penal system.  The population of these forced labor camps grew exponentially during the Stalin era as he collectivized agriculture by confiscating farm lands and sought to transform Russia into a modern industrial power.  The camps were located throughout Russia, but the largest were located in the most extreme geographical and climatic regions: the Arctic North and the Siberian East.   

Who was sent to the Gulag?

The Gulag not only housed Russia’s most violent criminals: murderers, rapists and thieves, but it also housed political prisoners, those suspected of conspiring against the State.   Russians lived in constant fear of the secret police and their network of informers.  Men and women were ripped from their beds in the dead of night, were arrested in the street or just disappeared never to be seen again.  Charges of petty theft, lateness or unexcused absences from work resulted in long harsh sentences: a person who showed up late to work 3 times could be sentenced to 3 years in the Gulag, a person who told a joke about a Communist Party official could be sentenced to 25 years; a person pocketing a couple of potatoes from he field could be sentenced to 10. 

 In 1929, Stalin confiscated the private farms of many peasants.  The ensuing revolts were met with brutal force: some were shot; some were tried as “rich peasants” and sent to the Gulag, and some were exiled to the most remote parts of the country.  

In 1933, Maria Tchebotareva stole three pounds of rye to feed her four starving children.   She was sentenced to 10 years in the Gulag but wasn’t released until 1945 and even then was forced to live in exile.  She never saw her children again.

Show elections were frequently held.  Voters were given ballots with only one Communist Party Candidate name on them.  In 1949, Ivan Burylov protested by writing “comedy” on his ballot.  The ballot was linked to him and he was sentenced to 8 years hard labor.

Life in the Gulag

During their non-working hours, prisoners were kept in a fenced in yard surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.  Overcrowded, filthy barracks gave them shelter.  Life was brutal and violent.  Prisoners competed for every basic necessity of life.  They had to survive hunger, cold, harsh labor, sadistic guards and their fellow prisoner informants. Jacques Rossi spent 19 years in the Gulag: “the Gulag was conceived in order to transform human matter into a docile, exhausted, ill-smelling mass of individuals living only for themselves and thinking of nothing else but how to appease the constant torture of hunger, living in the instant, concerned with nothing apart from evading kicks, cold and ill treatment.”  Food was rationed according to how much work you did.  A full day’s work equaled a full day’s ration which was barely enough to survive.  Those who worked less received less.  If you weren’t healthy enough to fulfill your work quota, you slowly starved to death.   Russian author Varlam Shalamov who spent 20 years in the Gulag wrote: “Each time they brought in the soup... it made us all want to cry. We were ready to cry for fear that the soup would be thin. And when a miracle occurred and the soup was thick we couldn’t believe it and ate it as slowly as possible. But even with thick soup in a warm stomach there remained a sucking pain; we’d been hungry for too long. All human emotions—love, friendship, envy, concern for one’s fellow man, compassion, longing for fame, honesty—had left us with the flesh that had melted from our bodies...”.

Work in the Gulag

14 hour days.  Back breaking labor.  Extreme cold.  Life had no value.  Like old parts to a machine, when one worker died, he was replaced by another.  From 1931-1933, the Sea-Baltic Sea Canal was dug out by over 100,000 Gulag prisoners.  Using crude picks, axes and wheelbarrows, prisoners trenched a 141 mile long canal in 20 months.  Stalin praised the project and reported its success to the world.  Like so much else, it was a lie.  The canal was too narrow and too shallow for most ships. It is estimated that tens of thousands of  prisoners died during its construction.

Conclusion

There were promised a better life.  They were promised equality.  It was all a lie.  Stalin used the Gulag to hide his secrets.  Millions of  people, real people, died trying to preserve their God-given, inalienable rights.  But there is no God under Socialism, there is only the State and the expendable workers who suffer under its brutal control.   If only they were warned.  If only they knew the truth.