Tuesday, May 15, 2018

Soviet GULAG Larger and More Deadly During and After World War II than in 1937


Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 15 – Nikita Khrushchev, many in the West in the past, and many in Russia today narrow the scope of the GULAG to 1937, the year of “the great terror” that swept into its maw numerous party and Soviet officials, thus distracting attention from how many more ordinary Russians were incarcerated and died in the camps in World War II and thereafter.

            That has the effect of minimizing in the minds of those who accept that version of events the nature and extent of the crimes of the Soviet system and making it easier for current autocrats like Vladimir Putin to portray that system in a positive light and to describe Stalin as “an effective manager.

            Fortunately, there are Russians who are fighting back, trying to produce a more honest picture of the past. Among them are the activists behind the Moscow Museum of the History of the GULAG which has now produced an interactive map of 555 GULAG camps of various kinds and dates and an annual accounting of inmates and deaths.

            The product of three years of work, the map and the numbers are admittedly incomplete; but they provide an important corrective to those who seek to present the camps as a Stalinist aberration rather than an integral part of the Soviet system. For the map itself, see gulagmap.ru/; for a discussion of it, rusk.ru/newsdata.php?idar=80771.

            Below are the figures by year of the number of GULAG inmates and the number of deaths for the period 1930 through 1956:

Year/Inmates/Inmate Deaths

1930 - 230,440 – 7980
1931 – 276,440 – 7283
1932 – 288,180 – 13,267
1933 – 553,765 – 67,297
1934 – 344,331 – 26,295
1935 – 542,571 – 32,659
1936 – 523,746 – 26,479
1937 -  828,570 – 33,499
1938 – 537,523 – 126,585
1939 – 405,221 – 65,301
1940 – 1.050,178 – 56,703
1941 – 1,198,139 - 120,864
1942 – 1,566,479 - 382,348
1943 – 1,344,507 – 288,399
1944 -  1,186,297 – 124,725
1945 – 941,654 – 87,903
1946 – 1,109,799 –33,066
1947 – 1,519,494 – 62,007
1948 – 1,161,233 – 30,688
1949 – 1,086,000 – 30, 688
1950 – 858,477 – 24,354
1951 – 699, 132 – 24,090
1952 – 675,100 – 21, 221
1953 – 533,270 – 10,369
1954 – 443,554 -- no data
1955 – 432,673 – no data
1956 – 506,599 – no data

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