Editing Gulag (section)

=== Colonization ===
[[File:Vorkuta r.jpg|thumb|The city of [[Vorkuta]]]]
Soviet [[wikisource:Об использовании труда уголовно-заключенных|state documents]] show that the goals of the gulag included colonization of sparsely populated remote areas and exploiting its resources using forced labor. In 1929, [[OGPU]] was given the task to colonize these areas.<ref name="Petrov10"/> To this end, the notion of "[[free settlement]]" was introduced. On 12 April 1930 [[Genrikh Yagoda]] wrote to the OGPU Commission:

{{blockquote|The camps must be transformed into colonizing settlements, without waiting for the end of periods of confinement... Here is my plan: to turn all the prisoners into a settler population until they have served their sentences.<ref name="Petrov10">{{cite book |last=Petrov| first=Nikita|author-link=Nikita Petrov| chapter=The GULag as Instrument of the USSR's Punitive System 1917–39 |title=Reflections on the Gulag: With a Documentary Index on the Italian Victims of Repression in the USSR|editor-last1=Dundovich| editor-first1=Elena |editor-last2=Gori| editor-first2=Francesca |editor-last3=Guercetti| editor-first3=Emanuela |isbn=978-88-07-99058-8 |oclc=803610496| year=2003| pages=8–10| publisher=Feltrinelli Editore|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=X2FGqiDKFysC&pg=PA10 }}</ref>}}

When well-behaved persons had served the majority of their terms, they could be released for "free settlement" (вольное поселение, ''volnoye poseleniye'') outside the confinement of the camp. They were known as "free settlers" ({{Langx|ru|вольнопоселенцы|translit=volnoposelentsy|label=none}}; not to be confused with the term {{Langx|ru|ссыльнопоселенцы|translit=ssyl'noposelentsy|label=none}}, "[[Involuntary settlements in the Soviet Union|exile settlers]]"). In addition, for persons who served full term, but who were denied the free choice of place of residence, it was recommended to assign them for "free settlement" and give them land in the general vicinity of the place of confinement.

The gulag inherited this approach from the [[katorga]] system.

It is estimated that of the 40,000 people collecting state pensions in [[Vorkuta Gulag|Vorkuta]], 32,000 are trapped former gulag inmates, or their descendants.<ref>Robert Conquest, Paul Hollander: Political violence: belief, behavior, and legitimation p.55, Palgrave Macmillan;(2008) {{ISBN|978-0-230-60646-3}}</ref>