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Gulag
The Gulag was a system of Labor camp, forced labor camps in the Soviet Union. The word ''Gulag'' originally referred only to the division of the Chronology of Soviet secret police agencies, Soviet secret police that was in charge of running the forced labor camps from the 1930s to the early 1950s during Joseph Stalin's rule, but in English literature the term is popularly used for the system of forced labor throughout the Soviet era. The abbreviation GULAG (ГУЛАГ) stands for "Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й" (Main Directorate of Correctional Labour Camps), but the full official name of the agency #Etymology, changed several times. The Gulag is recognized as a major instrument of political repression in the Soviet Union. The camps housed both ordinary criminals and political prisoners, a large number of whom were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas or other instruments of extra ...
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Political Repression In The Soviet Union
Throughout the history of the Soviet Union, tens of millions of people suffered political repression, which was an instrument of the state since the October Revolution. It culminated during the History of the Soviet Union (1927–1953), Stalin era, then declined, but it continued to exist during the "Khrushchev Thaw", followed by increased persecution of Soviet dissidents during the Era of Stagnation, Brezhnev era, and it did not cease to exist until late in Mikhail Gorbachev, Mikhail Gorbachev's rule when it was ended in keeping with his policies of glasnost and perestroika. Origins and early Soviet times Secret police had a long history in Tsarist Russia. Ivan the Terrible used the Oprichnina, Oprichina, while more recently the Third Section of His Imperial Majesty's Own Chancellery, Third Section and Okhrana existed. Early on, the Leninism, Leninist view of the class conflict and the resulting notion of the dictatorship of the proletariat provided the theoretical basis of th ...
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Memorial (society)
Memorial ( rus, Мемориал, p=mʲɪmərʲɪˈaɫ) is an international human rights organisation founded in Russia during the fall of the Soviet Union to study and examine the Human rights in the Soviet Union, human rights violations and other crimes committed under Joseph Stalin's reign. Subsequently, it expanded the scope of its research to cover the entire Soviet period. Memorial is the recipient of numerous awards, among others the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, 2022. Prior to its dissolution in Russia in early 2022, it consisted of two separate legal entities, Memorial International, whose purpose was the recording of the crimes against humanity committed in the Soviet Union, particularly during the Stalinist era, and the Memorial Human Rights Centre, which focused on the human rights defender, protection of human rights, especially in conflict zones in and around modern Russia. A movement rather than a unitary system, as of December 2021 Memorial encompa ...
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Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Dzhugashvili; 5 March 1953) was a Soviet politician and revolutionary who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until Death and state funeral of Joseph Stalin, his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, General Secretary of the Communist Party from 1922 to 1952 and as the fourth Premier of the Soviet Union, premier from 1941 until his death. He initially governed as part of a Collective leadership in the Soviet Union, collective leadership, but Joseph Stalin's rise to power, consolidated power to become an absolute dictator by the 1930s. Stalin codified the party's official interpretation of Marxism as Marxism–Leninism, while the totalitarian political system he created is known as Stalinism. Born into a poor Georgian family in Gori, Georgia, Gori, Russian Empire, Stalin attended the Tiflis Theological Seminary before joining the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party. He raised f ...
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NKVD
The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (, ), abbreviated as NKVD (; ), was the interior ministry and secret police of the Soviet Union from 1934 to 1946. The agency was formed to succeed the Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU) secret police organization, and thus had a monopoly on intelligence and state security functions. The NKVD is known for carrying out political repression and the Great Purge under Joseph Stalin, as well as counterintelligence and other operations on the Eastern Front of World War II. The head of the NKVD was Genrikh Yagoda from 1934 to 1936, Nikolai Yezhov from 1936 to 1938, Lavrentiy Beria from 1938 to 1946, and Sergei Kruglov in 1946. First established in 1917 as the NKVD of the Russian SFSR, the ministry was tasked with regular police work and overseeing the country's prisons and labor camps. It was disbanded in 1930, and its functions dispersed among other agencies before being reinstated as a commissariat of the Soviet Union ...
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Vorkuta
Vorkuta (; ; Nenets languages, Nenets for "the abundance of bears", "bear corner") is a coal-mining types of inhabited localities in Russia, town in the Komi Republic, Russia, situated just north of the Arctic Circle in the Pechora coal basin at the river Vorkuta (river), Vorkuta. In 2010, its population was 70,548, down from 84,917 in 2002. Vorkuta is the Northernmost settlements#Cities and towns, third largest city north of the Arctic Circle and the easternmost town in Europe. It has the coldest recorded temperature of any European city, having recorded a −52 °C (−61 °F) temperature. Vorkuta's population has dropped steadily since the fall of the Soviet Union, when mines were privatized and many people began moving farther south. Many of the mines have been abandoned and by September 2020, the city's estimated population was only about 50,000. A report in March 2021 described the villages in the area as "ghost towns" with many "abandoned structures". History ...
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Labor Camp
A labor camp (or labour camp, see British and American spelling differences, spelling differences) or work camp is a detention facility where inmates are unfree labour, forced to engage in penal labor as a form of punishment. Labor camps have many common aspects with slavery and with prisons (especially prison farms). Conditions at labor camps vary widely depending on the operators. Convention no. 105 of the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO), adopted internationally on 27 June 1957, intended to abolish camps of forced labor. In the 20th century, a new category of labor camps developed for the imprisonment of millions of people who were not criminals ''per se'', but political opponents (real or imagined) and various so-called undesirables under communist and fascist regimes. Precursors Early-modern states could exploit convicts by combining prison and useful work in manning their galleys. This became the sentence of many Christian captives in the Ottoman ...
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Roy Rosenzweig Center For History And New Media
Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media (RRCHNM), formerly the Center for History and New Media (CHNM), is a research center specializing in digital history and information technology at George Mason University (GMU) in Fairfax County, Virginia. It was one of the first digital history centers in the world, established by Roy Rosenzweig in 1994 to use digital media and information technology to democratize history: to incorporate multiple voices, reach diverse audiences, and encourage popular participation in presenting and preserving the past. Its current director is Lincoln Mullen. History Under Roy Rosenzweig CHNM was founded in the fall of 1994 by Roy Rosenzweig as a research center within the GMU Department of History and Art History. Its origins lay in Rosenzweig's work with Steve Brier and Josh Brown on a CD-ROM version of the American Social History Project's American history textbook, ''Who Built America?'' but as Rosenzweig was initially the only person ...
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Internment
Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without Criminal charge, charges or Indictment, intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply mean imprisonment, it tends to refer to preventive confinement rather than confinement ''after'' having been convicted of some crime. Use of these terms is subject to debate and political sensitivities. The word ''internment'' is also occasionally used to describe a neutral country's practice of detaining belligerent Military, armed forces and equipment on its territory during times of war, under the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907#Hague Convention of 1907, Hague Convention of 1907. Interned persons may be held in prisons or in facilities known as internment camps or Concentration camp, concentration camps. The term ''concentration camp'' originates from the Spanish–Cuban Ten Years' War when Spanish forces ...
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Correctional Labour Camp
Correctional labour camps (), were penal labour camps in the Soviet Union. Background In the Russian Empire, by 1917, most prisons were subordinate to the Main Prison Administration of the Ministry of Justice, which worked in conjunction with the provincial bodies of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. After the February Revolution of 1917, a wide amnesty took place, the number of prisoners in September 1917 was just over 34,000, while the pre–revolutionary maximum in 1912 was 184,000; by 1916, as a result of the mass recruitment of young men into the army, the number of prisoners had dropped to 142,000. The Main Prison Administration was renamed the Main Administration of Places of Detention, with prison inspections in the field, over which the center was rapidly losing control. After the October Revolution, this department passed under the People's Commissariat of Justice, created to replace the ministry of the same name. Since the new leadership did not trust the old cadres, ...
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