While the atrocities of the Soviet regime are numerous, none targeted its own society in a more inhumane, ruthless manner than the Gulag prison camp system. Short for “Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Labor Settlements (Glavnoye upravleniye ispravityelno-trudovykh lagerey i koloniy),” the Gulag system dotted the USSR and, between 1917 and1986, affected the lives of nearly 30 million people. Within these camps, especially between 1937 and Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953, people were whittled down to their most primitive state, existing only within a desolate reality of abusive guards, punishing weather, and the ever-present notion they were nothing more than a cheap, inexhaustible resource.
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