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Paul Gregory

AnIntroduction to the Economics of the Gulag

The term“Gulag” translates as “The Main Administration of Camps,” an agency that wassubordinated to the USSR Ministry of Interior.[1]The interior ministry itself operated under four acronyms from the BolshevikRevolution to Stalin’s death in March of 1953. It was first the Cheka, underits first minister Feliks Dzherzhinsky. It was renamed OGPU in 1922. The OCGPwas merged into the NKVD in 1934. The NKVD was headed by G.G. Yagoda (from1934-36), N. I. Yezhov (from 1936-38), and L.P. Beria (from 1938-45). It wasrenamed the MVD in 1946. Although the interior ministry had three otherministers prior to Stalin’s death, the bloody history of the Cheka-OGPU-NKVD-MVD is associated with thesefour leaders, of whom only Dzerzhnisky escaped execution by dying of naturalcauses. The Great Purges of 1937-38 is usually referred to as the“Yezhovschina” after the NKVD’s zealous minister who spearheaded it.[2]

The genericterm “Gulag” refers to the vast system of prisons, camps, psychiatrichospitals, and special laboratories that housed the millions of prisoners, orzeks, who populated it. Although Sovietpropaganda at times praised the Gulag’s rehabilitation of anti-Soviet elementsthrough honest labor, there were no Soviet studies of the Gulag. The interiorministry had to turn to studies written in the West, which were carefullypreserved within its archives.[3]Broad public understanding of the magnitude and brutality of the Gulag wasgenerated by the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s notedGulag Archipelago.[4] Since Russian independence a large number ofhistorical and political works have been published inRussia along witha number of memoirs of former prisoners. Former camp administrators haveremained silent; so we have no accounts from the perspective of the camp’sbosses.

The Gulag as an Institution of theTotalitarianState

This bookis a collection of studies of forced labor in theSoviet Union until Stalin’s death and its immediate aftermath. Thesechapters focus primarily on the most extreme form of coercion – penal labor,but they also describe the application of force to the everyday work place, apractice that was prominent from the late 1930s through the end of World WarII. The massive political and social literature that exists today on the Gulaghas established beyond a shadow of doubt its brutality and criminality and haschronicled the human suffering and loss of life it occasioned. Our focus is onthe Gulag as an institution of coercive power in a totalitarian state. We areinterested in its functions, how it operated both formally and informally, andits contributions to the goals of the dictator. We are interested in whetherthe Gulag was created to serve the economic interests of the totalitarian stateor whether it was the by-product of the dictator’s consolidation of power.

The Sovietadministrative-command system was the most important experiment of thetwentieth century. Its true operation was hidden behind a vast veil of secrecy,which can now be pierced by the opening of formerly secret archives. Studiesusing these formerly secret archives reveal the system’s working arrangementsto be more complex and subtle than had been previously imagined.[5]We must examine the institution of the Soviet Gulag in a similar light todetermine its true working arrangements.

Thechapters in this book are based primarily on research in the archives of theGulag, both in its central, regional, and local archives. Three chaptersexamine the general institutions of force and coercion as applied to labor(Khlevnyuk, Sokolov, and Tikhonov). Four chapters are devoted to case studiesof three major Gulag projects (The White Sea-Baltic Canal by Moryukov, Magadanby Nordlander, theKarelia region by Joyce, and theNorilsk Metallurgy Complex by Ertz). Borodkin and Ertz examine the use of penallabor inNorilsk in acomparative context. The case studies use both central and local archives,while the studies of central institutions use the central archives of the Gulagand relevant central archives of the Soviet state and party.[6]These archives are located inMoscow, and inthe regions themselves. The Gulag archives are alsolocated in the collections of theHoover Institution.

These documents tell the complicated storyof the creation and operation of the forced labor system partly by design andpartly by learning-by-doing. Internalreports on the “state of the Gulag” reveal a high level of introspection by topGulag administrators and provide a valuableinsider’s views of the Gulag’sweaknesses and strengths. Other Soviet institutions did not develop such a highlevel of self-reflection insofar as their job was to convince their superiorsthat they were performing well, albeit under difficult circumstances.

Internal Gulag documents reveal threeconstants of Gulag administration: First, the Gulag’s structure and developmentwere dictated by the political strategy of the dictatorship. As noted by a Gulag administrator:“Organizationalchanges within the Gulag are normally caused by external political and/oreconomic decisions of the state.”[7] The Gulagwas populated as a consequence of the exogenous state policies ofcollectivization,GreatTerror, 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 ofthe prison camp network. The Gulag’sattempts at forward planning grossly underestimated the growth of inmates. Itsplanners consistently expected a diminishing number of prisoners. The thirdFive-Year Plan (1938-42), which was drawn up during the Great Purges,remarkably projected a decreasing number of inmates just as the first victimsof the Great Terror began flooding in. 

The second constant was the economicRaison d’etre of the Gulag: the exploration and industrial colonization ofremote resource-rich regions at a low cost of society’s resources. As noted by an internal Gulag document:"Thehistory of the Gulag is the history of the colonization and industrialexploitation of the remote regions of the state.”[8] Although prison labor was used throughout theUSSR, Gulaglabor was principally concentrated in the remote regions with difficultclimates that would have been costly to settle with free labor. The use ofpenal labor in remote regions was supposed to achieve to create economic“surpluses” (similar to Marx’s surplus value) by paying unfree labor onlysubsistence (or well below free labor) to produce products that had substantialeconomic value. Prison labor was also supposed to be more mobile than hiredlabor in that it could be shifted in large numbers from one project to another.Penal labor was supposed to provide these surpluses and resource mobilitywithout the loss of labor productivity. Close supervision and monitoring, itwas hoped, would render penal labor as productive as free labor.

The thirdconstant was the conflict between the economic function of the Gulag and itsfunction of isolating inmates from the general population and preventingescapes. The more prisoners were used for construction and production, whichrequired their movement from job to job or from task to task, the weaker thesecurity regime. Prisoners contracted out to civilian enterprises andinstitutions were particularly difficult to guard, to isolate from the generalpopulation, and to prevent from escaping. To a degree, the Gulag attempted toreduce the friction between its isolation and economic functions by locatingproduction facilities close to the place of confinement, but this was anexpensive solution. All the economic tasks that inmates were supposed to carryout could not be located within the confines of camps.As the Gulag’s economic system became more complicated and its economicobligations heavier, “its priority function of protection and isolation wasnegatively affected”, as remarked one Gulag chronicler.[9]

Thechapters in this book show the struggle within the dictatorship and within theGulag between the notion that productive labor can be extracted by coercion andforce and the realization that people must be offered “carrots” as well assticks if they are to work well. The Chapter by Sokolov shows that the Sovietleadership sought in vain the appropriate balance between carrots and sticks inthe “civilian” labor force and often combined extreme coercion with extremematerial incentives. The chapters by Khlevnyuk, Borodkin and Ertz, Joyce, andNordlander show that material incentives played an ever larger role inmotivating penal labor and Tikhonov shows that in the last few years of theGulag, distinctions between free and penal labor became blurred. The chapter byBorodkin and Ertz shows that eventually inmates had to be offered materialincentives that were distributed among prisoners much as they were distributedamong civilian workers. Although the prison bosses had an arsenal of tools tomotivate prisoners to fulfill their plans – punishment, sentence reductions for good work, moralincentives, and material incentives – they learned that coercion alone was notsufficient. Moreover, there were complicated tradeoffs: Prisoners placed onreduced rations for failing to meet their quotas were no longer able to workeffectively because of their weakened state. One of the most effectiveincentive systems – reduced sentences as a reward for exemplary work – deprivedthe Gulag of its best workers due to early release.

The Organizational Structure of the Gulag

In the Chapters that follow, thereare references to a large number of organizations related to the Gulag – OGPU,NKVD, MVD, Gulag main administrations and economic administrations, andregional organizations. We have already explained that the OGPU, MKVD, and MVDwere, in effect, different names for the Soviet interior ministry, or the statesecurity ministry, which was the superior of the Gulag administration. To simplify the discussion that follows, weshall 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 highestpolitical and party authority, the Council of People’s Commissars (the higheststate body) and the Politburo (the highest body of the communist party). Like industrial ministries, the NKVD wasbroken down into Main Administrations, calledGlavki, which were responsible for carrying out the variousfunctions of state security. This book is about the NKVD’s most notorious MainAdministration, the Main Administration for Camps – Gulag.

Chart 1 illustrates the activities ofthe Gulag. It received its orders from the NKVD; that is from the minister ofinterior, such as Yezhov or Beria. The head of the Gulag administration waspersonally responsible for carrying out these orders and directives. The supply of prisoners (zeks) was deliveredto the NKVD by the courts, justice ministries, and the like, which deliveredthem to the Gulag. The Gulag served as a “labor intermediary,” distributingpenal labor to its own Main Industrial Administrations, or Gulag glavks, to theeconomic administrations that it administered directly, or it could contractpenal labor out to other construction and industrial production ministries.Given that the Gulag had its own construction and production responsibilitiesand that Gulag Glavks, although quasi-independent, had to meet their targets,the Gulag had to weigh the financial benefits from contracting labor to thirdparties against the need for prisoners within its own production structure.

Almost all prisoners (zeks) wereconfined either in Corrective Labor Camps, called ITLs, or in laborcolonies, also known as general places of confinement. Henceforth we refer tothe former as “camps: and the later as “colonies.” Some inmates were confined to mentalinstitutions, high-security prisons, to special research facilities, such aselite scientists and engineers, or in special camps. Camps provided traditionalprison-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 transportfrom leaving the region. The term ofcustody was supposed to be the decisive formal criterion for the type ofconfinement: “In accordance with criminal laws (Article 28 of the Criminal Codexof theRussianRepublic), the

Corrective labor camps (ITL)are for those prisoners sentenced to terms of three years or more.”[10]

Prior tothe unification of control of forced labor under the NKVD in 1934, camps andcolonies were administered both by republican organizations (republican justiceministries and republican NKVDs) and by theUSSR interiorministry. The first and most famousprison camp, the Solovetsky Camp of Special Destination (SLON), was founded in1920 on Felix Dzerzhinsky’s (first head of Cheka) initiative[11] to isolatecounterrevolutionaries. The systematic utilization of forced labor began in1926 and was initially limited to forestry and fisheries in the local environs.[12] Starting with the first Five-Year Plan(1928-33), the OGPU was used as the agency of colonization. The Council ofPeople’s Commissars created onJuly 11, 1929 the Administrative Authority of Northern Camps of SpecialDestination (USLON) of the OGPU for the exploitation of mineral resources inthenorthern territories. Suchremote camps isolated individuals posing threats to the socialist state andcolonized undeveloped regions. The emerging network of the prison campadministration was created independently of the existing territorial prisonadministration system operated by the justice ministry and territorialauthorities. As a result, the administration of prison camps was in factdivided into two parts. The OGPU distributed the prisoners among the camps,while the territorial administrative organs were responsible for theirutilization. Newly created camps weresubordinated to the OGPU, such as the notablecamp complexes founded in 1932 (listed in Table 1).[13]

The Gulag system was concentrated under the NKVD in1934, namely, under its Gulag administration.[14] Under this unified administration,inmate number soared, as did Gulagresponsibilities. Many projects begun bycivil administrations were shifted to the Gulag, eventually overwhelming itsadministrative 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 anoverall labor budget of 14.7 million. rubles. The Gulag is systematicallycharged with additional building projects, which result in a remarkablebacklog. The large number of construction projects requires a fundamentalreorganization, and the magnitude of these tasks complicates management in anextreme fashion, leading to a diversification of tasks and to bottlenecks inresource allocation.”[15]

Toadminister its increasingly complex production and construction complexes, theGulag created in 1941 Main Economic Administrations called, also called Glavki,to takeresponsibility for itseconomic activities.[16] These newlyfounded administrations were based upon branch principles except Dal’Stroi (FarNorthern Construction), which administered 130 separate camp facilities in aterritory covering three million square kilometres (See Chapter by Nordlander). TheGulag’s complex structure gave observers the impression of several Gulagsdeveloping in the pre-warUSSR.

 The Second World War reduced the number ofprisoners due to transfers to the front and increased mortality, and the numberof Gulag organizations declined (See Khlevnyuk and Sokolov). Although the Gulagadministration 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, returningPOWs, and wartime collaborators. Both the number of inmates and the Gulag’seconomic activities expanded again after 1947.[17] Inmate totals reached their peak at 2.5million in the early 1950s.Table 2 presents a general picture of the Gulag on theeve of World War II, at the end of the war, and in the early 1950s. The increase in the Gulag bureaucracyappeared to outrun the increasein the numberof prisoners.  The ratio of guards toinmates rose after the war to almost one guard for every ten inmates. These ratios must be interpreted with cautionbecause a high proportion of guards were themselves inmates (See Chapter byBorodkin and Ertz).

Gulag as the Supplier of Penal Labor

Throughoutthe numerous changes in administration, inmate totals, and responsibilities,the Gulag remained the sole centralized administrator of the camp sector orguard regime. As such, it was the monopoly supplier of prison labor to theeconomy. As noted by one of the Gulag’schief administrators: “The Gulag ensures the required labor force replenishmentof the building projects and industrial plants of the MVD by supplyingprisoners to the appropriate camps and colonies.At the same time, the Gulag provides manpower for civilian ministries on acontractual basis in order to organize special colonies for prisoners next tothe industrial location and building projects of these ministries.”[18] All colonies and several agricultural campsremained under the direct control of the Gulag itself, including special campsfor “counterrevolutionaries”, which were founded in 1948, and which required aspecial disciplinary regime.

 Table 3 shows the distribution of prison laboraccording to Glavki, to the Gulag’s own operations (the Third Department), andalso by prisoners contracted out to civilian enterprises. For the early 1950s, of the 2.5 millionprisoners, between one and 1.3 million inmates worked in the Gulag’s own ThirdDepartment, between a quarter and a half million were hired out, and theremainder worked primarily in forestry, railroad construction, militaryproduction, hydro-electric power, and in Far-North construction.The Third Department was the largest economic subdivisionof the Gulag, accounting for more than one third of all prison labor for morethan a decade. In addition to gold mining, the Third Department includedseveral old Gulag camps, most of the Special Camps founded in 1948, and allgeneral places of confinement, including colonies whose administration wascarried out by the territorial departments and subdivisions of the Gulag. Theuntold story of Table 3 is the 500,000 to 600,000 penal workers contracted outto civilian employers in the early post-war years. Although they constituted arelatively small share of the Soviet labor force, they were concentratedlargely in construction and thus constituted a much higher share of totalconstruction employment.

Although the criminal codex required that prisonerssentenced to less than three years be imprisoned in colonies, the Gulag openlydefied this law when it faced labor bottlenecks. From the Gulag’s perspective,those sentenced to colonies were less valuable because transport to the remotecolony could take up to half a year. Hence, the most significant projects werenot carried out in colonies. Special decrees allowed the MVD “to displace prisonerssentenced to a term of custody of up to two years from colonies to camps.”[19] A memorandum written for the Gulag administration inJuly of 1947 found that 13 percent of the inmates in camps had been sentencedto terms of custody of less than three years, while more than half of allprisoners in colonies were sentenced to more than three years and should have beenin camps. 

The MVD andits Gulag administration resisted calls for more civilian control of prisonlaborers as the Gulag and civilian employers wrestled for penal workers. Statepolicy sometimes favored the Gulag; sometimes the industrial ministries. A governmentdecree ofNovember 4,1947 forbad the assignment of prisoners to civilianprojects without MVD/Gulag approval, stipulating that prisoners were to besent on a priority basis to the far North and East, where it was difficult toprocure free labor. Another state decree obliged the MVD/Gulag to provide laborfrom special contingents without prior agreement with the MVD.[20] Open battles broke out between the Gulag andcivilian ministries. In 1950, theeconomic ministries claimed the Gulag “owed” them 125 thousand prisoners, whilethe Gulag accused the ministries of withholding 33 thousand prisoners.[21] Theministries lobbied for prime prison labor, while the Gulag supplied arepresentative cross-section of prisoners with regard to sex, age, qualification,and health. The Gulag preferred to supply women, elderly workers, and unskilledworkers, imposing social obligations linked to these categories of prisoners onthe hiring enterprise. Frequent quarrels over non-payments required Council ofMinisters intervention, such as the April 21, 1947 special order thatministries pay outstanding debts to the MVD, which could demand its prisonersback if payments were overdue more than one month. The decree ordered that:"These accounts have to be paid from the funds reserved for the payment ofthe regular wages for workers and employees.” Non-paying enterprises had to pay transport costs back to their placesof confinement.[22] 

The Gulag’ssupply of labor to civilian employers depended on the influx of prisoners. Whenthe number of prisoners entering the Gulag dropped sharply in 1951, the numberof inmates contracted out to outside employers also fell sharply. As stated by a Gulag report: “As a result ofthe decrease in inflow of newly sentenced contingents, the number of prisonersassigned to other ministries also sharply declined. Within one year alone fromNovember 1, 1950 toNovember 1, 1951, theirnumber declined by more than a third.”[23] When caught itself with a labor shortage, theGulag endeavored to cut supplies to other ministries. A new inflow of inmatesafter 1951 led to a new rise in building activity. Stakes were high in disputesbetween the Gulag and civilian employers because of the large numbers ofprisoners involved. Table 4 shows that prison labor could account for up to 18percent of total employment in some civilian sectors, such as heavy industryconstruction.

Table 5divides the 1950 Gulag labor staffing plan into construction, industry, andcontract employment. It shows that 27percent of Gulag labor was classified as “free”, although there is considerabledoubt as to how “free” such labor was (see Chapter by Borodkin and Ertz). More “free” labor worked in industry than inthe harsh conditions of construction. Most of the contracted-out inmate labor went to construction. Hence, if we add all of contracted workers toconstruction, we find that penal labor accounted for 87 percent of workers in Gulag construction projects, whileonly 19 percent of free labor worked inconstruction projects. In Gulagdocuments, these free workers are explicitly mentioned aslabor force sothat this figure does not include either administrative employees or guards.Thus the Gulag hired free labor in production while contracting out prisonersto the external construction sector. Thenumber of free laborers working in Gulag industry approximately equaled thenumber of prisoners “exported” for outside construction employment

The Gulag’s use of “free” labor contradicts both the stereotype of theGulag and the Minister of the Interior’s report addressed to Stalin, Malenkovand Bena, which stated that: “All orders concerning large-scale constructionand industrial production given to the Gulag are executed by prisoners.”[24] The Gulag may have exaggerated the role of prisoners in this case toclaim more budget resources. The Gulagalso expected budget subsidies for non-working and disabled prisoners. One document complains: “In fact, the donation from the budget waslower than the expenses for the maintenance of the non-working prisoners andjust covered the expenses for the maintenance of disabled persons and prisonerskept in transit camps until their forwarding to the camps and colonies.”[25] Beginningin 1948, there were repeated attempts by the MVD to incorporate the Gulagdirectly into the state budget to obtain automatic subsidies.[26]

The Geography of the Gulag

The Gulag’s camps, colonies, prisons, labs, and mental hospitals weredispersed across the vast expanses of theUSSR. Although Gulag operations took place in major metropolitan centers,such as the construction of the metro deep underneath Moscow, the major Gulagcamps and colonies (listed in the Chapter by Khlevnyuk), which employed tens ofthousands of prisoners, share one common feature: They were located in thenorthern and eastern parts of the Soviet Union in harsh climates and remotefrom civilization and transport. Geographical remoteness allowed prisoners tobe isolated form the rest of the population and reduced the costs of security.However, the main reason for location inthe far north and east was the presence of valuable resources, such asNorilsk’s nickel ores (see Chapter by Ertz), Magadan’s gold ores (see Chapterby Nordlander), or the forestry reserves of Siberia, which required massiveinfrastructure investments to develop and which were shunned by free labor.

Chart 3 provides a map of the major Gulag camps and colonies, toonumerous to name in this brief introduction. It clearly shows the skewedgeographical distribution of camps and colonies to the north and east.

The Gulag’s Economic Contribution

           The Gulag held somewhat less than two million prisoners inits colonies and camps in 1940. This number peaked at 2.5 million in the early1950s after former POWs and other returnees from the war were added to the listof Gulag inmates. Thus, in an economythat employed nearly 100 million persons, the Gulag accounted for two out ofevery hundred workers (SeeChart 3).This percentage could overstate the Gulag’s share of labor because it includesinvalids and other non-working inmates. However, we have already shown that the Gulag had a larger number ofso-called free workers; so the two percent figure is a reasonableestimate. The Gulag was charged withsome of the most difficult tasks of the economy such as heavy construction andwork 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 remoteand cold regions with difficult transport. Although Gulag labor accounted forsome 2 percent of the labor force, it accounted for about one in fiveconstruction workers in 1940 and 1951. While accounting for between 6 to 10percent of total investment, its share of construction investment neared 20percent in 1951. In fact, these figures understate the Gulag’s role inconstruction because, in 1938, 30 percent of the Gulag’s construction budgetwas hidden in civilian constructionministries.[27] Gulag production of the most precious and remote minerals such asgold and diamonds reached close to one hundred percent as Chart 3 shows.

The Gulag system was a by-product ofcollectivization, the Great Purges, draconian labor policies, and the aftermathof the Second World War. It would becontrary to script if Stalin and his political allies did not regard theresulting pool of inmates as aremarkable economic opportunity. Likethe peasants of the early 1930s who were supposed to deliver grain withoutcompensation, Stalin would have presumed that similar surpluses could beextracted from Gulag labor. In effect,the basic presumption would havebeen that penal workers could be forcedto work efficiently and conscientiously without being offered real materialincentives. The chapters by Sokolov Borodkinand Ertz show the degree to which these expectations were not realized. They all show that penal workers had to beoffered wages and monetary bonuses, thereby raising their cost to the state.

Table1

Table2 – Numbers of prisoners and camps (first of year)

Sources:

1941   9414-1-368, 9414-1-1155,9414-1-28

1947   9414-1-86

1951   9414-1-112

1953       9414-1-507

Table3. Distribution of Prison Labor (1947,1950, 1953)

Sources: Various documents from 9414 -1 and(Systema ITL…, M.1996)

Note that the numbersinvolve some double counting; perhaps forestry workers are included both in theforestry glavk and as third department workers.

Table4. Contract Assignments of Prison laborforce

Sources: 1946 - 9414-1-2114,l.33, 1950 - 9414-1-1343, ll.96-98

Table 5

Employment in Construction and Industry of theGulag Labor Corresponding to the Plan for 1950

(thousands of persons)

Source:9414-1-1312. The calculations presented above are based upon the data ofthe “projected plan of the average annual labor requirements of the industrialand construction sectors for 1950”, drawn up by the planning department of theMVD.

 Sources: Gulag inmates, Table2, labor force includingconstruction labor force: Warren Eason, “Labor Force,” in Abram Bergson andSimon Kuznets (eds.), Economic Trendsin the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1963), pp. 77,82; Gulag construction labor iscalculated 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 RichardMoorsteen 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 totalitarnogogosudarstva (Moscow 1997), p. 97.