Paul Gregory
An
Introduction to the Economics of the Gulag
The term
“Gulag” translates as “The Main Administration of Camps,” an agency that was
subordinated to the USSR Ministry of Interior.[1]
The interior ministry itself operated under four acronyms from the Bolshevik
Revolution to Stalin’s death in March of 1953. It was first the Cheka, under
its first minister Feliks Dzherzhinsky. It was renamed OGPU in 1922. The OCGP
was merged into the NKVD in 1934. The NKVD was headed by G.G. Yagoda (from
1934-36), N. I. Yezhov (from 1936-38), and L.P. Beria (from 1938-45). It was
renamed the MVD in 1946. Although the interior ministry had three other
ministers prior to Stalin’s death, the bloody history of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD is associated with these
four leaders, of whom only Dzerzhnisky escaped execution by dying of natural
causes. The Great Purges of 1937-38 is usually referred to as the
“Yezhovschina” after the NKVD’s zealous minister who spearheaded it.[2]
The generic
term “Gulag” refers to the vast system of prisons, camps, psychiatric
hospitals, and special laboratories that housed the millions of prisoners, or zeks, who populated it. Although Soviet
propaganda at times praised the Gulag’s rehabilitation of anti-Soviet elements
through honest labor, there were no Soviet studies of the Gulag. The interior
ministry had to turn to studies written in the West, which were carefully
preserved within its archives.[3]
Broad public understanding of the magnitude and brutality of the Gulag was
generated by the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s noted Gulag Archipelago.[4] Since Russian independence a large number of
historical and political works have been published in
The Gulag as an Institution of the
This book
is a collection of studies of forced labor in the
The Soviet
administrative-command system was the most important experiment of the
twentieth century. Its true operation was hidden behind a vast veil of secrecy,
which can now be pierced by the opening of formerly secret archives. Studies
using these formerly secret archives reveal the system’s working arrangements
to be more complex and subtle than had been previously imagined.[5]
We must examine the institution of the Soviet Gulag in a similar light to
determine its true working arrangements.
The
chapters in this book are based primarily on research in the archives of the
Gulag, both in its central, regional, and local archives. Three chapters
examine the general institutions of force and coercion as applied to labor
(Khlevnyuk, Sokolov, and Tikhonov). Four chapters are devoted to case studies
of three major Gulag projects (The White Sea-Baltic Canal by Moryukov, Magadan
by Nordlander, the
These documents tell the complicated story
of the creation and operation of the forced labor system partly by design and
partly by learning-by-doing. Internal
reports on the “state of the Gulag” reveal a high level of introspection by top
Gulag administrators and provide a valuable insider’s views of the Gulag’s
weaknesses and strengths. Other Soviet institutions did not develop such a high
level of self-reflection insofar as their job was to convince their superiors
that they were performing well, albeit under difficult circumstances.
Internal Gulag documents reveal three
constants of Gulag administration: First, the Gulag’s structure and development
were dictated by the political strategy of the dictatorship. As noted by a Gulag administrator: “Organizational
changes within the Gulag are normally caused by external political and/or
economic decisions of the state.”[7] The Gulag
was populated as a consequence of the exogenous state policies of
collectivization, Great
Terror, harsh labor laws, and imprisonment of returning POW’s. From 1934 on, the Gulag had to manage the
“unplanned” rise in the number of prisoners and the simultaneous expansion of
the prison camp network. The Gulag’s
attempts at forward planning grossly underestimated the growth of inmates. Its
planners consistently expected a diminishing number of prisoners. The third
Five-Year Plan (1938-42), which was drawn up during the Great Purges,
remarkably projected a decreasing number of inmates just as the first victims
of the Great Terror began flooding in.
The second constant was the economic
Raison d’etre of the Gulag: the exploration and industrial colonization of
remote resource-rich regions at a low cost of society’s resources. As noted by an internal Gulag document: "The
history of the Gulag is the history of the colonization and industrial
exploitation of the remote regions of the state.”[8] Although prison labor was used throughout the
The third
constant was the conflict between the economic function of the Gulag and its
function of isolating inmates from the general population and preventing
escapes. The more prisoners were used for construction and production, which
required their movement from job to job or from task to task, the weaker the
security regime. Prisoners contracted out to civilian enterprises and
institutions were particularly difficult to guard, to isolate from the general
population, and to prevent from escaping. To a degree, the Gulag attempted to
reduce the friction between its isolation and economic functions by locating
production facilities close to the place of confinement, but this was an
expensive solution. All the economic tasks that inmates were supposed to carry
out could not be located within the confines of camps. As the Gulag’s economic system became more complicated and its economic
obligations heavier, “its priority function of protection and isolation was
negatively affected”, as remarked one Gulag chronicler.[9]
The
chapters in this book show the struggle within the dictatorship and within the
Gulag between the notion that productive labor can be extracted by coercion and
force and the realization that people must be offered “carrots” as well as
sticks if they are to work well. The Chapter by Sokolov shows that the Soviet
leadership sought in vain the appropriate balance between carrots and sticks in
the “civilian” labor force and often combined extreme coercion with extreme
material incentives. The chapters by Khlevnyuk, Borodkin and Ertz, Joyce, and
Nordlander show that material incentives played an ever larger role in
motivating penal labor and Tikhonov shows that in the last few years of the
Gulag, distinctions between free and penal labor became blurred. The chapter by
Borodkin and Ertz shows that eventually inmates had to be offered material
incentives that were distributed among prisoners much as they were distributed
among civilian workers. Although the prison bosses had an arsenal of tools to
motivate prisoners to fulfill their plans – punishment, sentence reductions for good work, moral
incentives, and material incentives – they learned that coercion alone was not
sufficient. Moreover, there were complicated tradeoffs: Prisoners placed on
reduced rations for failing to meet their quotas were no longer able to work
effectively because of their weakened state. One of the most effective
incentive systems – reduced sentences as a reward for exemplary work – deprived
the Gulag of its best workers due to early release.
The Organizational Structure of the Gulag
In the Chapters that follow, there
are references to a large number of organizations related to the Gulag – OGPU,
NKVD, MVD, Gulag main administrations and economic administrations, and
regional organizations. We have already explained that the OGPU, MKVD, and MVD
were, in effect, different names for the Soviet interior ministry, or the state
security ministry, which was the superior of the Gulag administration. To simplify the discussion that follows, we
shall use the best-known designation of the interior ministry of the Stalin era
– the NKVD. As Chart 1 explains, the NKVD received its orders from the highest
political and party authority, the Council of People’s Commissars (the highest
state body) and the Politburo (the highest body of the communist party). Like industrial ministries, the NKVD was
broken down into Main Administrations, called Glavki, which were responsible for carrying out the various
functions of state security. This book is about the NKVD’s most notorious Main
Administration, the Main Administration for Camps – Gulag.
Chart 1 illustrates the activities of
the Gulag. It received its orders from the NKVD; that is from the minister of
interior, such as Yezhov or Beria. The head of the Gulag administration was
personally responsible for carrying out these orders and directives. The supply of prisoners (zeks) was delivered
to the NKVD by the courts, justice ministries, and the like, which delivered
them to the Gulag. The Gulag served as a “labor intermediary,” distributing
penal labor to its own Main Industrial Administrations, or Gulag glavks, to the
economic administrations that it administered directly, or it could contract
penal labor out to other construction and industrial production ministries.
Given that the Gulag had its own construction and production responsibilities
and that Gulag Glavks, although quasi-independent, had to meet their targets,
the Gulag had to weigh the financial benefits from contracting labor to third
parties against the need for prisoners within its own production structure.
Almost all prisoners (zeks) were
confined either in Corrective Labor Camps, called ITLs, or in labor
colonies, also known as general places of confinement. Henceforth we refer to
the former as “camps: and the later as “colonies.” Some inmates were confined to mental
institutions, high-security prisons, to special research facilities, such as
elite scientists and engineers, or in special camps. Camps provided traditional
prison-type confinement with guards and strict supervision of prisoners. Colonies were located in remote regions, and
“colonists” were prevented by internal passport rules and lack of transport
from leaving the region. The term of
custody was supposed to be the decisive formal criterion for the type of
confinement: “In accordance with criminal laws (Article 28 of the Criminal Codex
of the
Corrective labor camps (ITL)
are for those prisoners sentenced to terms of three years or more.”[10]
Prior to
the unification of control of forced labor under the NKVD in 1934, camps and
colonies were administered both by republican organizations (republican justice
ministries and republican NKVDs) and by the
The Gulag system was concentrated under the NKVD in
1934, namely, under its Gulag administration.[14] Under this unified administration, inmate number soared, as did Gulag
responsibilities. Many projects begun by
civil administrations were shifted to the Gulag, eventually overwhelming its
administrative capacities as a 1940 report indicated: “The Gulag has 30 main building projects;
none will be completed in 1940. All will continue for several years, with an
overall labor budget of 14.7 million. rubles. The Gulag is systematically
charged with additional building projects, which result in a remarkable
backlog. The large number of construction projects requires a fundamental
reorganization, and the magnitude of these tasks complicates management in an
extreme fashion, leading to a diversification of tasks and to bottlenecks in
resource allocation.”[15]
To
administer its increasingly complex production and construction complexes, the
Gulag created in 1941 Main Economic Administrations called, also called Glavki,
to take responsibility for its
economic activities. [16] These newly
founded administrations were based upon branch principles except Dal’Stroi (Far
Northern Construction), which administered 130 separate camp facilities in a
territory covering three million square kilometres (See Chapter by Nordlander). The
Gulag’s complex structure gave observers the impression of several Gulags
developing in the pre-war
The Second World War reduced the number of
prisoners due to transfers to the front and increased mortality, and the number
of Gulag organizations declined (See Khlevnyuk and Sokolov). Although the Gulag
administration expected a continued decline in its role at the end of the war,
there was a new influx of inmates sentenced under new criminal codes, returning
POWs, and wartime collaborators. Both the number of inmates and the Gulag’s
economic activities expanded again after 1947.[17] Inmate totals reached their peak at 2.5
million in the early 1950s. Table 2 presents a general picture of the Gulag on the
eve of World War II, at the end of the war, and in the early 1950s. The increase in the Gulag bureaucracy
appeared to outrun the increase in the number
of prisoners. The ratio of guards to
inmates rose after the war to almost one guard for every ten inmates. These ratios must be interpreted with caution
because a high proportion of guards were themselves inmates (See Chapter by
Borodkin and Ertz).
Gulag as the Supplier of Penal Labor
Throughout
the numerous changes in administration, inmate totals, and responsibilities,
the Gulag remained the sole centralized administrator of the camp sector or
guard regime. As such, it was the monopoly supplier of prison labor to the
economy. As noted by one of the Gulag’s
chief administrators: “The Gulag ensures the required labor force replenishment
of the building projects and industrial plants of the MVD by supplying prisoners to the appropriate camps and colonies.
At the same time, the Gulag provides manpower for civilian ministries on a
contractual basis in order to organize special colonies for prisoners next to
the industrial location and building projects of these ministries.”[18] All colonies and several agricultural camps
remained under the direct control of the Gulag itself, including special camps
for “counterrevolutionaries”, which were founded in 1948, and which required a
special disciplinary regime.
Table 3 shows the distribution of prison labor
according to Glavki, to the Gulag’s own operations (the Third Department), and
also by prisoners contracted out to civilian enterprises. For the early 1950s, of the 2.5 million
prisoners, between one and 1.3 million inmates worked in the Gulag’s own Third
Department, between a quarter and a half million were hired out, and the
remainder worked primarily in forestry, railroad construction, military
production, hydro-electric power, and in Far-North construction. The Third Department was the largest economic subdivision
of the Gulag, accounting for more than one third of all prison labor for more
than a decade. In addition to gold mining, the Third Department included
several old Gulag camps, most of the Special Camps founded in 1948, and all
general places of confinement, including colonies whose administration was
carried out by the territorial departments and subdivisions of the Gulag. The
untold story of Table 3 is the 500,000 to 600,000 penal workers contracted out
to civilian employers in the early post-war years. Although they constituted a
relatively small share of the Soviet labor force, they were concentrated
largely in construction and thus constituted a much higher share of total
construction employment.
Although the criminal codex required that prisoners
sentenced to less than three years be imprisoned in colonies, the Gulag openly
defied this law when it faced labor bottlenecks. From the Gulag’s perspective,
those sentenced to colonies were less valuable because transport to the remote
colony could take up to half a year. Hence, the most significant projects were
not carried out in colonies. Special decrees allowed the MVD “to displace prisoners
sentenced to a term of custody of up to two years from colonies to camps.”[19] A memorandum written for the Gulag administration in
July of 1947 found that 13 percent of the inmates in camps had been sentenced
to terms of custody of less than three years, while more than half of all
prisoners in colonies were sentenced to more than three years and should have been
in camps.
The MVD and
its Gulag administration resisted calls for more civilian control of prison
laborers as the Gulag and civilian employers wrestled for penal workers. State
policy sometimes favored the Gulag; sometimes the industrial ministries. A government
decree of
The Gulag’s
supply of labor to civilian employers depended on the influx of prisoners. When
the number of prisoners entering the Gulag dropped sharply in 1951, the number
of inmates contracted out to outside employers also fell sharply. As stated by a Gulag report: “As a result of
the decrease in inflow of newly sentenced contingents, the number of prisoners
assigned to other ministries also sharply declined. Within one year alone from
Table 5
divides the 1950 Gulag labor staffing plan into construction, industry, and
contract employment. It shows that 27
percent of Gulag labor was classified as “free”, although there is considerable
doubt as to how “free” such labor was (see Chapter by Borodkin and Ertz). More “free” labor worked in industry than in
the harsh conditions of construction.
Most of the contracted-out inmate labor went to construction. Hence, if we add all of contracted workers to
construction, we find that penal labor accounted for 87 percent of workers in Gulag construction projects, while
only 19 percent of free labor worked in
construction projects. In Gulag
documents, these free workers are explicitly mentioned as labor force so
that this figure does not include either administrative employees or guards.
Thus the Gulag hired free labor in production while contracting out prisoners
to the external construction sector. The
number of free laborers working in Gulag industry approximately equaled the
number of prisoners “exported” for outside construction employment
The Gulag’s use of “free” labor contradicts both the stereotype of the
Gulag and the Minister of the Interior’s report addressed to Stalin, Malenkov
and Bena, which stated that: “All orders concerning large-scale construction
and industrial production given to the Gulag are executed by prisoners.”[24] The Gulag may have exaggerated the role of prisoners in this case to
claim more budget resources. The Gulag
also expected budget subsidies for non-working and disabled prisoners. One document complains: “In fact, the donation from the budget was
lower than the expenses for the maintenance of the non-working prisoners and
just covered the expenses for the maintenance of disabled persons and prisoners
kept in transit camps until their forwarding to the camps and colonies.”[25] Beginning
in 1948, there were repeated attempts by the MVD to incorporate the Gulag
directly into the state budget to obtain automatic subsidies.[26]
The Geography of the Gulag
The Gulag’s camps, colonies, prisons, labs, and mental hospitals were
dispersed across the vast expanses of the
Chart 3 provides a map of the major Gulag camps and colonies, too
numerous to name in this brief introduction. It clearly shows the skewed
geographical distribution of camps and colonies to the north and east.
The Gulag held somewhat less than two million prisoners in its colonies and camps in 1940. This number peaked at 2.5 million in the early 1950s after former POWs and other returnees from the war were added to the list of Gulag inmates. Thus, in an economy that employed nearly 100 million persons, the Gulag accounted for two out of every hundred workers (See Chart 3). This percentage could overstate the Gulag’s share of labor because it includes invalids and other non-working inmates. However, we have already shown that the Gulag had a larger number of so-called free workers; so the two percent figure is a reasonable estimate. The Gulag was charged with some of the most difficult tasks of the economy such as heavy construction and work in harsh and remote climates that would have required exceptional pay and effort if left to free labor. Some two thirds of Gulag economic activity was in construction, often in remote and cold regions with difficult transport. Although Gulag labor accounted for some 2 percent of the labor force, it accounted for about one in five construction workers in 1940 and 1951. While accounting for between 6 to 10 percent of total investment, its share of construction investment neared 20 percent in 1951. In fact, these figures understate the Gulag’s role in construction because, in 1938, 30 percent of the Gulag’s construction budget was hidden in civilian construction ministries.[27] Gulag production of the most precious and remote minerals such as gold and diamonds reached close to one hundred percent as Chart 3 shows.
The Gulag system was a by-product of
collectivization, the Great Purges, draconian labor policies, and the aftermath
of the Second World War. It would be
contrary to script if Stalin and his political allies did not regard the
resulting pool of inmates as a
remarkable economic opportunity. Like
the peasants of the early 1930s who were supposed to deliver grain without
compensation, Stalin would have presumed that similar surpluses could be
extracted from Gulag labor. In effect,
the basic presumption would have
been that penal workers could be forced
to work efficiently and conscientiously without being offered real material
incentives. The chapters by Sokolov Borodkin
and Ertz show the degree to which these expectations were not realized. They all show that penal workers had to be
offered wages and monetary bonuses, thereby raising their cost to the state.
Table 1
PROJECT |
LOCATION |
TASK |
Belomor-Baltiisky ( |
Kareliia |
Construction of the |
Severo-Vostochny (North-East) |
|
Development of the |
Prorvinsky |
|
Fishery |
Dmitrovsky |
|
Construction of the Moscow-Volga-Channel |
Baikal-Amursky |
|
Railroad Construction |
Table 2 – Numbers of prisoners and camps (first of year)
|
1941 |
1947 |
1951 |
1953 |
Total number of
inmates (million) |
1.9 |
1.7 |
2.5 |
2.5 |
Prisoners in camps (million) |
1.5 |
0.8 |
1.5 |
1.7 |
Total number of
camps (million) |
76 |
56 |
115 |
158 |
Number of main Administrations |
9 |
6 |
12 |
15 |
Guards
(thousand) |
107 |
91 |
223 |
257 |
Ratio of guards
to inmates |
5.6 |
5.3 |
8.9 |
10.2 |
Sources:
1941 9414-1-368, 9414-1-1155,
9414-1-28
1947 9414-1-86
1951 9414-1-112
1953
9414-1-507
Table
3. Distribution of Prison Labor (1947,
1950, 1953)
Main Glavki |
Function |
Number of inmates (thousands) |
|||
1941 |
1947 |
1950 |
1953 |
||
GULZhDS |
Railroad construction |
486 |
192 |
294 |
205 |
Glavpromstroi |
Military construction |
204 |
124 |
183 |
382 |
Glavgidrostroi |
Hydraulic Construction / Engineering |
193 |
0 |
46 |
119 |
GULGMP |
Metal mining |
158 |
173 |
224 |
242 |
Dalstroi |
Far North Construction |
184 |
102 |
153 |
175 |
GULLP |
Forestry |
318 |
244 |
280 |
322 |
GUShosDor |
Highways |
25 |
0 |
24 |
20 |
Third Department |
Gulag production (special camps and
colonies) |
704 |
1,168 |
1,320 |
986 |
Contract workers |
Hired out |
255 |
469 |
636 |
273 |
Total MVD |
|
2,290 |
2,027 |
2,561 |
2,482 |
Sources: Various documents from 9414 -1 and
(Systema ITL…, M.1996)
Note that the numbers
involve some double counting; perhaps forestry workers are included both in the
forestry glavk and as third department workers.
Table
4. Contract Assignments of Prison labor
force
November 1946 |
July 1950 |
||||
Ministry |
Number |
% |
Ministry |
Number |
% |
Building
projects in: Heavy industry |
45,940 |
11.9 |
Ministry of
Heavy Construction |
104,943 |
18.0 |
Fuel industry |
39,772 |
10.3 |
Coal industry |
76,893 |
13.2 |
Non-ferrous metallurgy |
29,886 |
7.7 |
Power plants |
51,511 |
8.8 |
Coal industry
(West and East) |
21,641 |
5.6 |
Small engineering |
41,628 |
7.1 |
Transport |
20,921 |
5.4 |
Oil industry |
31,392 |
5.4 |
Military and
naval industry |
19,772 |
5.1 |
Wood processing
& paper industry. |
30,597 |
5.2 |
Aviation industry |
18,213 |
4.7 |
Metallurgical
industry |
25,855 |
4.4 |
Power plants |
14,841 |
3.8 |
Aviation
industry |
15,249 |
2.6 |
Automotive engineering |
12,683 |
3.3 |
Chemical industry |
13,898 |
2.4 |
Ferrous metallurgy |
12,505 |
3.2 |
Food industry |
13,563 |
2.3 |
Food industry |
11,908 |
3.1 |
Transportation |
13,555 |
2.3 |
Special
Food Products |
11,420 |
2.9 |
Agricultural engineering |
13,354 |
2.3 |
Wood processing agricultural |
11,335 |
2.9 |
Building materials industry |
12,140 |
2.1 |
Engineering |
11,204 |
2.9 |
Automotive engineering |
10,532 |
1.8 |
Building materials industry |
10,033 |
2.6 |
House-building industry |
9,726 |
1.7 |
Textile industry |
7,879 |
2.0 |
BM |
9,413 |
1.6 |
Civil construction |
6,644 |
1.7 |
Car- and tractor industry |
9,172 |
1.6 |
Other |
80,934 |
19.2 |
Other |
99,780 |
16.1 |
Civilian Sector |
387,531 |
91.7 |
Civilian Sector |
583,201 |
94.2 |
Contracted to MVD |
35,045 |
8.3 |
MVD |
39,903 |
6.4 |
Overall |
422,576 |
100 |
Overall |
619,274 |
100 |
Sources: 1946 - 9414-1-2114,
l.33, 1950 - 9414-1-1343, ll.96-98
Table 5
Employment in Construction and Industry of the
Gulag Labor Corresponding to the Plan for 1950
(thousands of persons)
|
(1) |
(2) |
(3) |
4 = 2+3 |
|
|||
|
Industry |
Construction |
Hired out |
(3+4) |
Total |
|||
|
Number |
|
3 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
|
Thousand |
% |
|
|
|
% |
Th. |
% |
Penal |
739 |
63 |
596 |
69 |
584 |
81 |
1918.3 |
73 |
Free |
437 |
37 |
270 |
31 |
|
19 |
707.3 |
27 |
Total labor |
1176 |
100 |
866 |
100 |
584 |
100 |
2625.6 |
100 |
% |
45 |
|
33 |
|
22 |
55 |
100 |
|
Source: 9414-1-1312. The calculations presented above are based upon the data of
the “projected plan of the average annual labor requirements of the industrial
and construction sectors for 1950”, drawn up by the planning department of the
MVD.
Sources: Gulag inmates, Table2, labor force including construction labor force: Warren Eason, “Labor Force,” in Abram Bergson and Simon Kuznets (eds.), Economic Trends in the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 77,82; Gulag construction labor is calculated at 75 percent of the total following Table 5. Gulag investment figures are from GARF 9414-1-28, 9414-1-1312, 9414-1-188. The overall investment figures are from Richard Moorsteen and Raymond Powell, The Soviet Capital Stock, 1928-1962 (Homewood, Ill.: Richard D. Irwin, 1966), p. 391. The mineral production shares are from Ivanovna, Gulag v siteme totalitarnogo gosudarstva (Moscow 1997), p. 97.
[1] The author is particularly grateful
to Aleksei Tikhonov who collected much of the statistical material cited in
this chapter in the Soviet Gulag archives of the Hoover Institution.
[2] Marc Jannsen and Nikita Petrov, Stalin’s Loyal Executioner, People’s Commiaas
Nikolai Ezhov, 1895-1940 (Stanford: Hoover Press, 2001).
[3] Oleg Khlevnyuk, “The Economy
of the Gulag,: in Paul Gregory (ed.), Behind
the Façade of Stalin’s Command Economy (Stanford:
Hoover Press, 2001), p. 111.
[4] Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, 3 vols. (New
York: Harper and Row, 1973).
[5] See for example Paul Gregory, The Political Economy of Stalinism: New
Evidence from the Secret Soviet Archives (New York: Cambridge University
Press, 2003).
[6] S.A. Krasilnikov, “Rozhdenie Gulaga: Diskussia v Verkhnikh
Eschelonakh Vlasti: Postanovlenia Politburo TsK VKP(b), 1929-1930,” Istoricheskiy Archiv. 1997, N 4,
p.142-156
[7] 9414-1-368, l.115
[8] 9414-1-368, l.115
[9] “Vosniknovenie i Rasvitie ITL, ULAGa i GULAGa OGPU-NKVD-MKVD SSSR“ - 9414-1-369 (3.4708) l.129.
[10] 9414-1-502, l.158.
[11] 9414-1-368, l.118
[12] 9414-1-368, l.118
[13] 9414-1-368,
l.120
[14] Sobranie Zakonov SSSR -1934,
№ 56, p.421 (see: 9414-1-368, l.117-118)
[15] 9414-1-2990, ll.5
[16] The Main Economic Administrations (glavki) independent from the Gulag were
founded through the decree №00212 from the
GUShDS (Main Administration of
Railroad Construction)
GUGidroStroi (Main Administration of
Hydraulic Construction / Engineering)
GULGMP (Main Administration of Camps
in Mining and Metallurgical Industry)
GULPS (Main Administration of Camps
for Industrial Construction)
ULTP (Administration
of Camps in Heavy Industry)
ULLP (Administration of Camps in
Forestry and Wood Processing)
Administration of Construction of the
Dal’stroi (Far Eastern Construction
Trust)
GULSchossDor (Main Administration of Camps for Highway Construction)
[18] 9414-1-374, l.55
[19] 9414-1-1170, l.1
[20] 9414-1-112, l.39
[21] 9414-1-112, 26
[22] 9414-1-1271, (f. 3.5086), l.66
(Circulation letter of the Chief of the Gulag, Dobrynin, to local
administrators of camps and colonies (
[23] 9414-1-3712, l.169.
[24] 9414-1-118, l.4
[25] 9414-1-
118, l.4
[26] 9414-1-334, Report by Minister of
Interior Kruglov including a similar proposal, written in 1948
[27] GARF 9414-1-1139.