gulag

     

The Gulag was the government agency that aministered the penal labor camps of the Soviet Union. "Gulag" is the Russian acronym for The Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps and Colonies — Главное Управление Исправительно-Трудовых Лагерей и колоний, Glavnoye Upravleniye Ispravitel'no-Trudovykh Lagerey i koloniy — of the NKVD. Eventually, by metonymy, the usage of "Gulag" began generally denoting the entire penal labor system in the USSR, then any such penal system. In Russian, Gulag is pronounced: (Russian: ГУЛАГ, listen (help·info))

Trivia about gulag

  • Alexander Solzhenitsyn spent 1945 to 1953 in one of these places for a letter critical of Stalin
  • Felix E. Dzerzhinsky oversaw the system of forced labor camps now known by this Russian name
  • It's the abbreviated form of the Russian for "Chief Administration of Corrective Labor Camps"

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