Anne Elizabeth Applebaum (born July 25, 1964) is an American-born Jewish-Polish journalist

and Pulitzer Prize–winning author who has written extensively about Marxism-Leninism and the
development of civil society in Central and Eastern Europe.

Applebaum has brought together much of the new material from Russia. Her book is mainly based on published memoirs
(250 are listed in the bibliography), but Applebaum has also done some interviews, traveled to the former Gulag settlements,
labored through archives, and read a huge amount of secondary literature.

Гулаг (рус. ГУЛаг) је била владина агенција која је управљала

главним[1] совјетским системом логора за принудни рад. У овим логорима су се налазили
осуђеници разноликог типа, од ситних криминалаца, до политичких затвореника, али
велики број њих је осуђен по поједностављеним процедурама, попут НКВД тројки и других
инструмената вансудског кажњавања, и гулази су признати као главни
инструмент политичке репресије у Совјетском Савезу.
ГУЛаг је скраћеница од Главна управа за логоре и колоније поправног
рада (рус. Гла́вное управле́ние исправи́тельно-трудовы́х лагере́й и коло́ний) НКВД-а.
Ова управа је званично основана 25. априла 1930. а укинута 13. јануара 1960.[2]Временом
је, по метонимији, израз „гулаг“ почео да се користи за целокупан систем казненог рада у
СССР.
У марту 1940, је постојало 53 засебна логора и 423 радне колоније у СССР.[6]Многи од
главних индустријских градова у руском арктику, као што су Нориљск, Воркута, и Магадан,
су некада били логори које су изградили затвореници а којима су управљали бивши
затвореници.[
14 милиона људи је прошло кроз гулаг „радне логоре“ од 1929. до 1953, додатних 6 до 7
милиона је депортовано и послато у егзил у удаљене крајеве СССР, а још 4-5 милиона је
прошло кроз „радне колоније“, што је значило служење краћих (мање од 3 године)
временских казни.[10]Укупно становништво у логорима је варирало од 510.307 (1934) до
1.727.970 (1953).[6]Према студији совјетске архивске грађе из 1993, укупно 1.053.829 људи
је умрло у гулазима од 1934. до 1953.[6]Ове процене искључују оне који су умрли убрзо
након пуштања, а чије смрти су биле последица суровог третмана у логорима;[11]такви
случајеви су били чести.[12]Студије које узимају у обзир и ове случајеве за исти временски
период наводе број од 1.258.537, уз процењених 1,6 милиона од 1929. до 1953.[13]
Већина затвореника у гулазима нису били политички затвореници, мада је њихов удео био
значајан.[14]Људи су могли да заврше у гулагу због дела као што су ситна крађа или
причање вицева о владиним званичницима.[15][16]Око половине политичких затвореника су
послати у Гулаг логоре без суђења; званични подаци наводе више од 2,6 милиона
затворских казни у случајевима које је истраживала тајна полиција у периоду од 1921. до
1953.[17]Гулаг логори су драстично смањени након Стаљинове смрти 1953. године.

The appendix - essential reading in Gulag - makes a properly cautious estimate of the
number of men, women and children who endured the living hell. There were so
many different sorts of camps and so many different categories of prisoners that it is
impossible to be precise. But according to the NKVD secret police's own documents -
putting aside 'forced labour', prisoner of war camps, 'filtration camps' (in which the
hope of release was always offered but never realised) and the kulak 'special exiles' -
there was never a year between 1936 and 1953 when the Gulags contained less than a
million detainees. By 1948 the figure had grown to 2 million. And there it stayed until
the camps were closed.

Those totals do not, Applebaum, tells us, reflect the numbers who passed through in
any one year. Prisoners escaped, were released into the Red Army and died. They
died of overwork, starvation and disease. Suicide was comparatively rare, although
probably not as rare as survivors claim. The essential Russian 'myth of stoicism'
exaggerated, in hindsight, the determination which one survivor described as the
sustaining goal - 'to get out of that suffering and hope to meet with the people one
loved'.

Brutality on the scale that Applebaum describes must, in part, be the product of
mental disorder. Stalin, sitting comfortable and warm in the Kremlin, could
slaughter his enemies (and those whom he feared), motivated by nothing more than
evil. But what of the men who ran the gulags?

Two women, both 'intellectuals', who were unaccustomed to physical work and
weakened from years in prison, were sent to chop down trees. At the end of the first
day they were adjudged to have completed only 18 per cent of their designated task
and so received only 18 per cent of their already meagre rations. They were 'led out
next day, literally staggering from weakness' while their jailer kept repeating that
there was no food for 'traitors who could not fulfil their tasks'. Of course the jailer
was a brute. It seems to me that he was also crazy.

Perhaps you had to be to work in a gulag. Official reports referred to camp guards as
'not second-class but fourth-class people, the very dregs'. Even the commandants
were men of minimal education. Most posts with any responsibility were filled by
'leftovers' and 'hopeless drunkards' from other sections of the NKVD. Who else,
sadists aside, would have chosen to live in the most inhospitable parts of the Soviet
Union among the outcasts of the glorious revolution?

The accounts of punishment, torture, rape, enforced prostitution (which may be an

extension of the same thing), self-mutilation when deranged, the 'goners' who were
left to die of disease or starvation and the madness I leave to readers with the
stomach to digest such details. But even the faint-hearted should rejoice at the
stories of genuine heroism that emerge from the Stygian darkness. To rise up in such
circumstances must, even allowing for the recklessness of despair, have taken
extraordinary courage. But there were men bold or mad enough to circulate
pamphlets calling for uprisings and freedom. And at the Kengir camp there was a
strike - led by a committee that included a common criminal as well as the usual
political prisoners - which at least hastened the end of the whole foul system.

Forty-six prisoners were killed in the suppression of the uprising. But (in one of her
few clichés) Applebaum describes them as losing the battle but winning the war.
Admittedly they did not open hostilities until Stalin was dead. And the relaxation had
already begun. NKVD chief Beria had written a report to the Praesidium of the
Central Committee, saying that less than 10 per cent of the gulags' inmates were
'dangerous state criminals'. The figures for the rest were in themselves terrifying -
438,788 women (of whom 6,286 were pregnant), 35,505 women accompanied by
children under two, 198,000 men and women with incurable illnesses.

The precision of the calculations does credit to the Soviet statistical system. The
economic analysis was not, however, of the same high quality. 'By 1954 the
unprofitability of the camps was widely recognised.' Was there ever anyone in
Moscow who really thought that the gulags could make money? The food and shelter
cost very little. Much of the administration was carried on by promoted prisoners.
The guards were of such low quality that one woman warder was found on duty with
a rag stuck down the barrel of her rifle. But, although the camp commandants
aspired to impress their superiors with the production of goods as diverse as barrels,
telephone boxes, soap and sheepskin coats, men and women working in those
conditions are essentially unproductive.
The most extraordinary revelation in Gulag, which will haunt everyone who reads it,
is that life in the camps was far worse than anything described by Alexander
Solzhenitsyn. The gulags were the last circle of ice in a modern inferno. No wonder at
the end of the war Soviet citizens captured wearing German uniforms barricaded
themselves into their barracks to avoid being repatriated to Mother Russia. But
repatriated they were, along with 20,000 Cossacks - anti-Bolshevik partisans who
had not so much fought for Hitler as against Stalin. British troops were ordered to
send the Cossacks home with their wives and children. But then, in 1944, 'Uncle Joe'
was our ally. In truth, his tyranny was barely beter than Hitler's.