Explaining History Podcast

Gulag

Explaining History Podcast

Gulag

Reading time:

1–2 minutes

Full Description

The Soviet system of forced labour camps, administered by the Main Administration of Labour Camps (Gulag). Under Stalin, the Gulag expanded into a vast network of camps housing political prisoners, criminals, and entire deported nationalities. At its peak in the early 1950s, the system held approximately 1.5 to 1.8 million prisoners; millions more passed through it over its existence. The camps were central to Soviet industrialisation — prisoners built canals, railways, and mines in conditions of extreme brutality.

Critical Perspective

Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s *The Gulag Archipelago* (1973) broke the Western left’s ability to romanticise the Soviet Union. The Gulag was not an aberration or a product of Stalinist excess — it was a structural feature of the Soviet economy and political system. Anne Applebaum’s research shows that the camps functioned simultaneously as an economic tool, a terror mechanism, and a site of deliberate cultural destruction.

Explaining History

Explaining History Podcast

For more than a decade, the Explaining History Podcast has helped listeners around the world make sense of modern history. What began in 2012 as a simple experiment—short, accessible episodes explaining major historical events—has grown into a long-running library of carefully researched, thoughtful explorations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

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