The Machine Starts

The Gulag — short for Main Administration of Camps — was not a single place. It was a vast network of labor camps, possibly numbering in the tens of thousands, spread across the Soviet Union from the Arctic Circle to the deserts of Central Asia. It began under Lenin but exploded under Stalin.

The system held roughly 18 million people between 1930 and 1953. Prisoners built roads, mined gold, and logged timber under conditions designed to work them to death. At least 1.5 million died in the camps.

The true toll may be far higher, because Soviet authorities deliberately destroyed records.