The Main Administration of Camps,[a] abbreviated as GULag, was a system of rehabilitative labor camps in the Soviet Union. Most of the prisoners were convicted of regular crimes and were not counterrevolutionaries. At the peak of the GULag system, 2.4% of the adult Soviet population was incarcerated, whereas 2.8% of the United States population is currently incarcerated.[1]
Working conditions
Inmates worked 10-hour days until 1954, when the work day was reduced to 8 hours. Prisoners who worked very productively could have their sentences reduced by up to half and were given extra food or money.[1] The death rate in the gulags was highest during the Second World War, but was always lower than the death rate in the Tsarist prison camps that had existed before the revolution, which had a death rate of over 35%.[2]
Notes
- ↑ Russian: Главное управление лагерей
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Saed Teymuri (2018-10-31). "The Truth about the Soviet Gulag - Surprisingly Revealed by the CIA" The Stalinist Katyusha. Archived from the original on 2019-04-01. Retrieved 2022-09-11.
- ↑ Anatoly Vishnevsky (2006). The Demographic Modernization of Russia, 1900-2000 (p. 432). Moscow. ISBN 5983790420