USSR and repression
Gulag
Gulag: Glavnoye upravleniye lagerey, Main Camp Administration
A Soviet forced labour camp; the Gulag was the agency that ran them and, by extension, the whole camp system, run from 1930 by the OGPU and then the NKVD. Millions passed through it, Poles among them.
The Polish word łagier comes from the Russian lager, a camp, and means a single camp; Gulag is the acronym of the agency that ran them, part of the NKVD from 1934. Prisoners, convicted of ordinary and political crimes, worked at logging, in mines and on vast construction projects, often in extreme climates and on starvation rations. Historians estimate that close to 20 million people passed through the camps and colonies between 1930 and 1953, and that at least one and a half million of them died.
In 1939–1941 tens of thousands of Polish citizens arrested in the eastern lands were sent to the camps; some regained their freedom under the 'amnesty' of August 1941 and reached General Anders's army. From 1944 Home Army soldiers were deported to the camps. After Stalin's death the system was gradually scaled back, and in 1960 the Gulag was abolished as an institution.
Sources
In the chronicle
(49)49 articles use this term.
1939
1940
1941
- 22 MayFourth deportation from the eastern lands
- 14 JuneThe June deportation
- 22 JuneThe June Uprising in Lithuania
- 22 JuneOperation Barbarossa
- 15 JulyThe Soltsy counter-attack
- 25 AugustThe invasion of Iran
- 31 AugustThe Great Provocation in Wilno
- 8 SeptemberThe deportation of the Volga Germans
- 28 NovemberThe Germans reach the Moscow–Volga Canal
- 3 DecemberActions in the Wilno Ghetto in December
- 4 DecemberThe Sikorski–Stalin declaration
1943
1944
- 15 JanuaryOperation Tempest
- 17 JanuaryBattle of Monte Cassino
- 2 FebruaryBattle of Narva (1944)
- 7 FebruaryJüri Uluots calls for mobilisation
- 14 FebruaryThe National Committee of the Estonian Republic
- 16 FebruaryThe breakout from the Korsun pocket
- 11 MayThe fourth battle of Monte Cassino
- 23 JulyThe Lwów uprising
- 19 AugustUluots's appeal
- 18 SeptemberThe Otto Tief government
- 22 SeptemberThe capture of Tallinn
- 25 NovemberThe capture of Saaremaa
1945
- 12 JanuaryVistula–Oder offensive
- 19 JanuaryDissolution of the Home Army
- 20 JanuaryThe flight from East Prussia
- 9 AprilThe capture of Königsberg
- 5 MayThe Prague uprising
- 8 MayThe surrender of Courland
- 20 MayThe end of the Texel uprising
- 5 JulyThe powers recognise the Provisional Government of National Unity
- 9 AugustThe Soviet invasion of Manchuria